paisley
by Faerie0975
Summary: when renesmee was born, there was another baby, too: edward-jacob. nessie & ej have just stopped aging, and the cullens are living in victoria, bc. a new family from england arrives and eats up the story about the cullens; except for one. / on hiatus.
1. News

Chapter 1

"Paisley, get down here! Family meeting!" shouted my father.

I sighed.

_I g2g, dad says it's time for a family meeting,_ I typed in, and pressed "Enter."

_kateluvsthesun: Seriously? I can't believe u still have those! :P_

_kateluvsthesun: Anyways I guess I'll ttyl... xoxoxoxo_

I signed off and closed my laptop.

"Paisley!" yelled Dad again.

"Coming," I called back, running downstairs. I fell onto the couch beside my younger brothers, nine-year-old twins Chase and Jadin. "I'm here," I said breathlessly. "How come you're getting mad at me for not being fast enough when Lane isn't here yet?"

"Lane's out with her boyfriend," said Dad, without missing a beat.

"What about Raynee?"

"At work."

"Kit?"

"Paisley," said Dad impatiently, "we're having a family meeting _now_. Kit should be down momentarily."

As if on cue, Kit burst into the room, black hair in a ponytail, wearing her customary outfit of sweatpants and a tank top. She sat down in the armchair beside the fireplace. "I'm here!"

My family was just a little bit hectic. Mum died in a car crash when I was eight, and so Dad was left to look after the six kids. First came Lane, who was nineteen. She'd just graduated and was planning to move in with her boyfriend of two years. The second kid was Raynee, who was eighteen, just about to start the twelfth grade in about a month, and worked almost 24/7 because she said that Dad couldn't support all of us by himself. Then me. I was sixteen and going to start grade ten soon. I was older than most of the people in my grade, because in third grade I'd missed almost an entire year of school; I had refused to go to school after Mum died. After me came Kit. Kit was fourteen and extremely excited because she was about to enter the kingdom that was high school. Then there was a lengthy gap of five years before the twins came along. Chase and Jadin were identical, annoying, and had been only a year old when Mum died.

"All right," said Dad, pacing back and forth in between the door and the fireplace. "There's no easy way to tell you guys this, but we're... moving."

"We're _what?_" I said incredulously.

"Moving," supplied Chase, obviously under the impression that he was being helpful.

"Will I still get to go to high school?" asked Kit, as thought that were the only thing that mattered.

"Yes," said Dad, and Kit smiled, satisfied.

"Where are we going?" asked Jadin eagerly.

"Victoria, BC. In Canada."

"Cool!" yelled Jadin.

"Am I the only one that isn't _happy_ about this?" I questioned.

But they didn't hear me. They were all making plans and rejoicing about the fact that we were going to leave England and go across an _ocean_, never looking back, leaving our whole lives behind.

"When are we going?" asked Chase. "Tonight? Tomorrow?"

Dad laughed. "No, we'll have to wait a couple of weeks. We're taking a boat all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, and then we have to drive all the way across Canada. You'll start school late -- the boat trip will take a week and a half, and then driving across the country will take us about two weeks, because we'll have to stop a lot for food and sleeping and other things like that, especially all the tourist attractions. Then we'll take a ferry from Vancouver to Victoria, and I've already bought our house online."

"Is it a _big_ house?" asked Kit.

"Yes, everybody gets their own bedroom. Except for Chase and Jadin, they'll share, but their room's pretty big," replied Dad, and went on to describe the new house in great detail. One of us -- me -- would get a bedroom on the first floor, next to the laundry room. There was a bedroom in the basement for Raynee, and a master suite upstairs for Dad, and two more bedrooms upstairs for Kit and the twins. Kit and the twins would share a bathroom, and Raynee would have a bathroom in the basement. And me? I would get the powder room. The little tiny bathroom with a sink and a toilet. On the upside, I was close to the kitchen, and also to the family room, where we'd have our flatscreen TV. Everybody seemed to be excited about a month-long trip that would take us halfway across the world.

I left while everybody was still talking excitedly about the move. I sat on my window seat and stared out at the big backyard I'd played in as a kid, with the lake beyond it and the mountains beyond that. When Raynee came home from work, I head her voice mingle with the others. When Lane returned just before her curfew, she had a yelling match with Dad until she'd convinced him that she would be fine here in England, that she would move in with Jonathan, her boyfriend, that she would be able to take care of herself. So Lane got to stay in England.

After three and a half hours of sitting at my window, I walked numbly over to my bed, sat down, and opened my laptop. The second I logged on to MSN, Kate was talking to me.

_kateluvsthesun: So what was the family meeting about??_

I sighed and typed in my news.

_paisley23: I'm moving._

It took Kate almost a minute and a half to type out the next thing that she said.

_kateluvsthesun: What?! Ur dad can't do that to u! What is he thinking?! Should I phone him and yell at him for u? U can move in with me, mum and dad won't mind... Or if they do then we'll move out, I saw an ad in the newspaper for an awesome-looking apartment, I bet if we both get jobs we can get together enough money. Maybe u can get Chase and Jadin and Kit to side with u and then u can convince ur dad to stay here. U can't leave me! U just can't! Who am I supposed to hang out with?! Liliana? Do u know how ANNOYING she is?! I'll die! I really will! U just can't leave, u can't, u can't! Tell ur dad that u refuse to go and u'll move in with me, ok?? Plz just tell him that. U can't lave. I know I keep saying that but it's true! U can't leave!_

I smiled grimly and typed, _I can't get Chase, Jadin OR Kit 2 side with me. For some reason, they're all super excited about it. I dunno why. Chase & Jadin are just happy bcuz it's something they've never done b4, and Kit's satisfied bcuz she still gets 2 go 2 high school..._

I talked to Kate for a little while, venting about the move, and then Dad came and knocked on my door.

_paisley23: Crap, I g2g. Bye xoxoxoxo_

I quickly signed off and snapped the laptop shut.

Dad opened the door a crack and peeked in. "No point in trying to hide it," he said. "I know you were talking to Kate. Most likely talking about how evil I am, am I right?"

I lay back on my bed and sighed, staring up at the ceiling. "Why do we have to move?"

"Why do you have to answer all my questions with more questions?" Dad returned.

"You do it, too," I pointed out.

"I guess I do."

"So why do we have to move?" I asked again.

"It's a big opportunity, Pais. The house was a good price, and Victoria's not a bad place to live. The new house is pretty close to a beach, you can go there anytime. And you'll make new friends," Dad told me.

"But what about Kate?" I whispered. "She's my best friend, Dad. She's been my best friend since second grade."

"You can still talk to her," he promised. "I found a computer program, Skype; you can make long-distance phone calls on it for free, and you can do video on it, too. And you still have MSN, and email. You can even send each other letters and things in the mail. You can still be friends."

"But Lane gets to stay here," I protested.

"Lane is nineteen, honey. She's old enough to live on her own, and she has enough money, too."

"Then I'll go with her."

"No, you're coming to Canada, Paisley," Dad ordered. "It'll be fun. You love the ocean -- we'll be on it for almost two weeks straight, on that boat cruise. It'll be fun."

I sighed. I hated how Dad could do this to me; just convince me in about two seconds that I would love whatever I didn't want.

***

_**Author's Note: **__Don't worry, the Twilight-ness is coming soon!_


	2. Goodbye

Chapter 2

Two weeks later, our house was empty. Dad had hired some people to come and drive the moving truck around after us for a whole month. He'd ordered mostly new furniture to be delivered to our new house in Canada. We would only bring a couple of things that were important to us in the moving truck, plus all of our boxes and boxes of belongings. We loaded our gigantic suitcases into the big trunk of our car.

"Pais!"

I looked around to see Kate running towards me.

"I'm so glad you haven't left yet!" she said. "I brought you a present." She held out a big box wrapped in shiny silver wrapping paper. "Open it right now!" she said excitedly.

The first thing I pulled out of the box was a package of fifty envelopes. I reached into the box again to find a sheet of stamps. I grinned at Kate. "Don't worry, I promise I'll send you letters as often as I can. I'll have to resort to emails on the cruise... They're faster, though, anyways." I looked into the box again and pulled out a packet of tissue paper. I unwrapped it to find yet another 'friends forever' necklace; I already had one necklace for every birthday, and a bracelet from every Christmas. I handed Kate the 'friends' necklace and put on the 'forever' necklace right there on the sidewalk. Then I turned back to the box to find a soft, cuddly teddy bear and a binder. I pulled out the binder and opened it. The first page read _Paisley and Kate: Best Friends Forever._ I looked up at Kate in awe. "You _made_ this?" I asked incredulously, turning the pages. They were full of pictures and page upon page of inside jokes typed out in different fonts. The last few pages had personal messages from all of the people at school that Kate could find.

Kate nodded. "I've been working on it for two weeks," she said. "It's been so hard keeping it from you!"

I smiled and hugged her. "I'll miss you, Kate," I said. "I promise I'll keep in touch."

Dad honked the horn. I glared at him. "Don't _you_ have any friends to say goodbye to?"

"I'm an old man," he joked. "I don't have any friends."

Kate started along the sidewalk back to her house, which was only two blocks away, and I climbed into the backseat of the car next to Chase and Jadin, still clutching the box from Kate. I spent the car ride to the boat staring in awe at the binder, flipping through the pages, reading all the little messages from my school friends. A lot of them had written down their email address for me, and their mailing address as well, telling me to send them pictures and to add them on MSN.

We sat in the line of cars for two hours as they prepared the boat and began to load the cars on. Our car, along with the moving truck, would sit in the bottom of the boat for a week and a half while we traveled across the ocean.

An employee led us to our rooms. I would share with Kit and Raynee. Dad and the twins would share the room across the hall from us. The moving people, two strong-looking men, would each have their own room, which Dad was paying for.

I got the bed that was the farthest from the door. There was a small bathroom off the main room, and a couch and TV pushed into a corner. I sat down on the tiny twin bed and waited for Dad and the twins to come and get Kit, Raynee and I to explore the boat. It took about twenty minutes before they knocked on our door and dragged us around the boat.

It was a pretty nice boat, with a pool on one of the lower decks and three floors of passenger suites. Dining areas took up an entire deck, with fancy restaurants as well as food courts, like there were in the mall. There were two decks at the very top of the boat, full of chairs and patio tables and an amazing view of the ocean and the dock that we were still attached to. The boat wouldn't leave the dock for another hour.

After we were done exploring the boat, we returned to our rooms. I took out my laptop and fired off a long email to Kate, describing every inch of the boat. It took me almost an hour to finish the email, and my fingers were sore by the time I was done. Then everybody that was on the boat went up to the top two decks to wave goodbye to England as the boat set off. I stayed up there for a long time, until the only things I could see were sky and ocean, and then I went back down to the room that I was sharing with my sisters.

"Hey, there you are," said Kit, glancing up as I walked into the room. She was lying on her stomach on her bed, her eyes glued to the TV in the corner of the room. "Raynee went to the pool. She wanted me to come, but I didn't want to. I want to go swimming after dinner instead."

"When _is_ dinner?" I asked.

"Another hour or so. Dad said to dress up nice. I think we're going to one of the fancy places." Kit wrinkled her nose. "I'm going to wear my sweatpants."

"No, you aren't," I said firmly. "Raynee and I won't let you." I rummaged around in Kit's suitcase for a minute. "Didn't you bring any _nice_ clothes with you?"

Kit grinned impishly. "I packed them up with my winter clothes," she confessed. "I didn't want to wear them. They're all in boxes in the moving truck." She smiled triumphantly.

"Well, you'll just have to borrow something of mine," I told her, ignoring the look of horror that she gave me. I went to my suitcase and picked out a black dress with spaghetti straps and a pale blue ribbon to tie around the waist. I selected a pair of black flats and a thin, silver chain of a necklace with a little heart charm dangling from it. I held out the dress, shoes and necklace to Kit and pointed at the bathroom. "Go get changed," I ordered.

Kit stared at me. "But there's another hour to go until dinner!" she protested.

"Yes," I replied, "and we'll need that time to do your hair."

Kit narrowed her eyes. "What are you planning to do with my hair?" she asked anxiously, her hands flying up to protect her ponytail.

"Curl it," I answered. "Go and change. _Now._"

After she was done, I tied the blue ribbon around her waist in a pretty bow at her back, fastened the necklace around her neck, picked out my outfit and ordered her not to move. When I emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, I was pleased to see that she was still sitting on her bed with her arms crossed and a scowl on her face.

I found my curling iron in my suitcase and plugged it in to heat up. Then I examined myself in the mirror.

I was wearing a black skirt, not too short, not too long. It had three layers of ruffles. I was also wearing an emerald green halter top. It wasn't too bright, but it wasn't a dull colour, either. I put on a pair of black heels and a silver necklace with several pearls strung along it. I put my hair back in a half-ponytail, leaving my side-bangs down, and put on a pair of silver earrings. Then I dragged Kit to the couch and made her sit on the armrest so that I could do her hair. She squirmed and wiggled and I burned her ear, but her black hair looked amazing when I was done. Raynee came back as I finished, commented on Kit's hair and dress, yelled a string of curse words when we told her that dinner was in fifteen minutes, and ran into the bathroom to get ready.

Dad knocked on our door five minutes before seven, and we walked along the carpeted corridors and into the elevator and down another, wider corridor to a fancy restaurant areas with a bar to one side and several tables with matching chairs and white tablecloths. We waited at the entrance for a few minutes, until a hostess came and took us to a table for six.

Dinner was quiet and full of polite chit-chat about the boat. Dad had forbidden the twins to speak at anything more than an 'inside voice.' After dinner, we returned to our rooms. Kit and I changed into our bathing suits and went to the pool. Raynee decided to stay in our room, because she had already gone swimming, and write a long email to her friend Ivy.

The pool was pretty crowded now, just after dinner. We stayed in the pool until almost eleven o'clock, then went back to our room to find Raynee fast asleep. We tiptoed around, getting ready for bed. After Kit was asleep, I opened my laptop again and typed out another long email to Kate. I described in detail the part of the day where I got Kit ready for dinner, knowing that Kate would understand.

_So it's been a very long day. Raynee and Kit are asleep, and it's almost one in the morning now, so I should probably go to sleep now,_ I finished off the email. _I'll email you again soon. I miss you!_

_Love, your best friend forever, Paisley._

***

_**Author's Note: **__The Twilight part of the story may take longer than I thought to come along, but hopefully I'll finish the next chapter soon -- I want to finish the cruise, at least. Hooray! I got two updates in one day!!!  
_


	3. Cruise

Chapter 3

When I woke up, I forgot where I was. Then I glanced out the tiny little window and saw the ocean spreading out before me, with the sun already high in the sky, and I remembered everything. I turned around and examined the room. Kit and Raynee were nowhere in sight. I went over to my suitcase, picked out a pair of black shorts and a hot pink shirt with orange flowers outlined on it, and locked myself into the bathroom. I braided my dark red hair and slipped on a pair of silver flip-flops, then grabbed a book out of my bag, took my sunglasses off the bedside table where I'd put them the day before, and headed up to the top deck to find somewhere to sit and read.

"Pais, there you are!" said a voice as I emerged into the bright sunlight. Kit, Raynee and the twins were licking ice cream cones and sitting at a patio table. Raynee patted the chair next to her and I sat down. She snatched the book out of my hands and shoved it into her purse.

"Am I not allowed to read or something?" I asked indignantly.

"That's exactly right," said Raynee, always the book-hating person that she was.

"Why not?"

"Because you're on a _cruise,_ Pais! You can't just bury your nose in a boring old book all day!"

"Books aren't boring!" I retorted.

"Enjoy yourself, Pais. Seriously. Hit the pool, or suntan, or something."

"Good idea," I said, standing up. "I'll take my book back, please. I'll read it while I'm suntanning." I held my hand out for the book.

Raynee sighed. "I'm not giving you the book back, Paisley."

"Fine," I replied. "I'll just go get another one from my bag." I hurried back downstairs before she could reply. Before I left the cabin, I shoved my bag behind the TV so that Raynee wouldn't find it and take it away. When she was looking for things, Raynee was never thorough. She would glance around the room once and move on.

I went to the deck below where I'd seen my family, found a place to sit and immersed myself in the world of words for a couple of hours. Then I went back up to the top deck, where my siblings still sat, now gorging themselves on a plate of nachos, and asked if anybody wanted lunch.

"Nope," said Chase cheerfully. "We just finished." He licked the cheesy grease off his fingers and grinned at me. "We had nachos and ice cream for lunch," he boasted.

I narrowed my eyes at Raynee. "_This_ is how you take care of little kids? They need healthy food, too, you know."

"But they wanted nachos and ice cream," protested Raynee.

"But sometimes little kids want things that they shouldn't have."

"Hey! We aren't little!" shouted Jadin.

"You're _almost_ big," I replied. "And don't shout."

"But we're outside," he said loudly.

"Just don't shout, Jadin," I sighed. "I'm going to buy you boys a sandwich."

"But we're not hungry anymore," Chase told me.

"Well, you can share a sandwich, then." I took Jadin's hand in one of my larger ones, held Chase's hand with the other, and took them to the Subway in one of the food courts.

After they finished their sandwich, I took them back to their cabin to get their swimsuits. Then we went to the pool and spent an hour and a half there before returning to our cabins. I deposited the twins in their cabin, where Dad was reading a thick paperback novel on the couch, and went across the hall. Kit was sitting on her bed with her laptop, typing furiously.

"What's up?" she asked, without looking up from the screen.

"I took the twins for a swim. What are you doing?"

"Emailing Ashley back. She sent me an email telling me that they won the summer basketball tournament."

"That's great!" I said warmly. Kit would have received a trophy along with the rest of the basketball team if we weren't moving. She was very sporty; she loved basketball, baseball, volleyball, and football. I should probably start calling football 'soccer' now.

"Yeah." She finally looked at me. "Raynee met some guy and she's still up there, talking to him. Want to go and embarrass her?"

"You really shouldn't do that to her, Kit." I hopped onto my bed and opened my laptop. "She never does anything to you."

"But it's fun," argued Kit.

"But it's mean," I returned. I checked my email. Nothing. I opened up MSN and logged on. The good thing about this boat was that it had wireless Internet.

_kateluvsthesun: PPPPPAAAAIIIIISSSSLLLLLLEEEYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_

I grinned.

_paisley23: Miss me? XD_

_kateluvsthesun: No kidding!!!!!!!!!!_

_paisley23: So what's going on 2day??_

_kateluvsthesun: Absolutely nothing. If u were still here we could go shopping or something, but you aren't here, and Liliana's annoying the crap outta me_

_paisley23: What did she do this time???_

_kateluvsthesun: She's phoning about every 2 seconds to ask if I wanna hang out, and she won't get a hint when I keep saying I'm busy 2day_

_paisley23: Maybe she knows ur lying_

_kateluvsthesun: She's not that smrt_

_kateluvsthesun: g2g answer the phone. again. if its her I swear 2 god I will kill myself._

_paisley23: don't you dare even THINK about that, k8._

_kateluvsthesun: Wasn't her. Happy??? And what is that, some kinda weird short-form of my name? don't shorten my name, Pais. Its already short enuf._

_paisley23: Its easier to type k8 than Kate tho_

_kateluvsthesun: I dont care_

_paisley23: well then KATE :P_

_kateluvsthesun: much better!_

"Paisley..."

I looked up. Kit was staring at me.

"Yeah?"

"Are you okay?" she asked, looking closely at me.

"I'm fine. Why?"

"I've been saying your name for about a minute straight and you acted like you didn't even hear me," she complained.

"Well, I _didn't_ hear you."

"What are you doing that's so important that you can't listen to your little sister?" she snapped.

"If you must know, I'm talking to Kate," I explained. "Why don't you see if Ash's on MSN?"

"Because I already checked," she sighed. "I have nothing to do."

"You can borrow a book from me if you like," I offered.

She snorted disdainfully. "What, like one of those sappy romance novels? No, thank you!"

"They aren't _all_ romance novels. Try 'The Hunger Games.' You might like it. Very suspenseful."

"Is that the old one that you keep reading over and over and over...?"

I nodded.

"Where is it?"

"In my bag, behind the TV." I paused and noted Kit's expression. "I was hiding my books from Raynee."

"What a genius spot to hide them," she muttered, stalking over to the TV and peeking behind it.

"She never looks in any spots where people might actually _hide_ things," I pointed out. Kit reached behind the TV and pulled out my purple bag. She unzipped the top and rummaged around for a bit before extracting 'The Hunger Games.' We spent the next couple of hours in complete silence. Raynee came back just as I was starting to feel hungry again. She had this huge smile stretching across her entire face.

"What are _you_ smiling about?" asked Kit suspiciously, looking up from the book.

"Josh is just _amazing,_" she said, dropping her purse on her bed and spinning around happily. "And he's so cute! You have to meet him!"

"I _did_ meet him," Kit said emotionlessly. "He didn't seem that great to _me._"

"Because you're such a great judge of character about things like that," retorted Raynee.

Kit glared at her and turned a page. "I bet you that he'll turn out not to like you at all," she challenged.

"What do you want to bet?" snapped Raynee.

"Guys, no betting," I said, stepping in between them. My life seemed to consist of breaking up their arguments. "Not on something like that. You know that you'll get all competitive about it, and Kit, you'll just go and embarrass Raynee, like you always do. Then you won't talk for about a month and you'll keep pranking each other. Lame pranks, too, like glue on a hairbrush and whoopee cushions."

"You say that like it's happened before," frowned Raynee.

"It _has_ happened before. Millions of times. Remember Spencer Norris? And Robert Gallaghy?"

Raynee blushed. "But that was different."

"How? Because you didn't meet _them_ on a cruise ship?"

I left it at that and returned to my laptop until Dad came to get us for dinner. Instead of going to a fancy restaurant again, we just went to one of the food courts. I got fries and a hamburger for dinner. The food court was loud, buzzing with conversations that were shouted over the noise of everybody ordering their food.

After dinner, Raynee, Kit and I went to the late-night swim until around one in the morning, then returned to our cabin, tiptoeing past the door of Dad's and the twins' cabin. I had stayed up late the night before, typing out that email to Kate, and now I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

***

_**Author's Note: **__Wow, this cruise is going to take a long time to write!_


	4. Anger

Chapter 4

The next few days passed in much the same way. Endless hours of hiding my books from Raynee, relaxing in the sun, and dragging the twins away from the sweet factory next to the book store. The boat really was like some kind of mall and hotel all rolled into one. I talked to Kate on MSN every night after dinner, exchanging news -- thank goodness that the boat had wireless Internet. I stayed up late and slept in every day, as though it were still summer. I knew I was going to pay for it when we arrived in Canada and I began school again, but I didn't care. Kit was able to convince me to come with her and spy on Raynee and Josh on some afternoons. These afternoons were spent peeking at the two of them from behind plants and newspapers. And before I knew it, there were only two days left on the cruise.

"Paisley," said Dad when I emerged, blinking, into the bright sunlight on the top deck, as I did every morning. He was sitting with his feet up on a patio table, reading a book. He loved long books, but he was an extremely slow reader; he'd been reading the same book for almost two weeks, every day for several hours, and he still wasn't finished it.

I sat down beside him. "Yeah?"

"The twins are with Raynee and that boy -- Josh? -- at the pool," he explained, "but..."

"But Raynee won't be paying too much attention to the twins," I finished for him, standing up again. "I'll go and keep an eye on them."

"That'd be great," said Dad, breathing a sigh of relief.

The pool was a zoo. I managed to find Raynee, immersed in a conversation with Josh, after a solid five minutes of searching.

"Raynee," I said, "where are the twins?"

"Swimming," she said vaguely, waving in the general direction of the pool.

"I can't find them."

"Keep looking. They're over there somewhere," she assured me, turning back to Josh.

I sighed. For an older, 'responsible' sister, Raynee sure was terrible at looking after kids. I spun on my heel and walked around the pool for a good ten minutes, scrutinizing every kid that I saw. There were no strawberry-blond heads in sight, so I returned to Raynee. "They aren't here," I reported.

"Of course they are," she said, without looking away from Josh. "You aren't looking properly, that's all."

I gritted my teeth. "Raynee, I've been looking for them for _ten minutes._ You've just been sitting here talking to Josh. _Help me find the twins!_"

Raynee smiled and batted her eyelashes at Josh. "Would you excuse me for just one minute?" she asked sweetly. But when she turned to me, her bright blue eyes were spitting fire. "Leave me _alone,_" she hissed. I know Kit's put you up to this, trying to keep me away from Josh --"

"_What?_" My mouth fell open. "How can you --"

"Don't think I haven't noticed the two of you, sneaking around behind my back, spying on us," she continued. "I can't believe that you two would do this to me -- every time I really like a guy, you two have to ruin it!"

"How can you _think_ that -- Raynee, the twins are _missing!_"

Raynee groaned. "Puh-_lease,_" she snapped. "They're perfectly fine. Probably having an underwater race or something."

"Listen to me, Raynee! The twins aren't anywhere around the pool! Where did you last see them?"

"I don't know, okay?" exploded Raynee. "Now leave me alone!"

I couldn't _believe_ her. Our brothers were missing, and all she cared about was stupid Josh and her stupid, bright red hair with its stupid, perfect curls. She ran her fingers through those curls as she turned back to Josh. I raced around the boat, looking for the twins, asking everybody I saw if they'd seen them. Raynee shouldn't be allowed to supervise the twins. Big sisters were supposed to keep little brothers _out_ of trouble, and at least care when they _were_ in trouble!

An employee with a cart of toilet paper and soap told me that she'd seen the twins running downstairs several minutes ago. I frowned; this was the lowest deck open to passengers. Unless...

And then it hit me. Something that only the twins would come up with. I thanked the lady and ran down two flights of stairs to where the cars were parked all in rows. This was the closest that people on board could get to the water. God only knew how the twins had gotten down here. God only knew how _I _got down there. There were big circles cut out of the wall, no glass, about twenty feet from the surface of the water. I raced along the rows of cars until I heard their voices. It was hard to follow their voices, given that the surfaces surrounding me were coated in cement, with any noises bouncing off, echoing around me. It sounded like twenty or so people were all running along beside me, their flip-flops flapping about as they ran, splashing through little puddles on the cement-coated floor. Finally, I saw them.

"Chase! Jadin!" I cried. They were poised by a porthole, Jadin peeking out at the rolling blue waves as Chase tied a thick rope around a cement pillar. Chase looked up and grinned at me.

"Hi, Pais," he smiled. "Will you help me tie this knot? I don't want it to come undone."

"What are you planning to do with it?" I asked, praying that I was mistaken.

"Well, the pool was full, so we found a _new _pool!" said Jadin excitedly. "Chase is going to tie the rope around me, and I'll jump into the ocean. Then he'll pull me out and he'll take a turn!"

"Oh, no, you don't," I said, grabbing Chase's arm as he started to take one end of the rope towards his brother. "That's _very _dangerous! Which one of you came up with this?" I looked from one to the other.

"Chase," said Jadin.

"Jadin," said Chase.

I shook my head, grabbed Jadin's wrist in my other hand, and led the two of them back up to the top deck.

"Having fun?" asked Dad, glancing up from his book. He noticed the expression on my face. "What's wrong?" He was alarmed now. He closed his book without putting the bookmark in. Dad placed the book on the table and brought his feet back to the deck.

"_These_ two," I said grimly, "were about to jump off of the boat when I caught up to them."

Dad's face turned that colour that it only did when he was mad and scared and confused all at the same time. "Wh-wh-_what?_" he spluttered, as if he hadn't heard me the first time. His head snapped around to look at the boys. "What were you two _thinking?_" And he began his lecture. "You could _die_ doing that. You --"

"But we thought of that," cut in Jadin, as Chase nodded eagerly. "We had a rope."

"We weren't going to jump in at the same _time,_" explained Chase, as though talking to a six-year-old. "How would we have gotten back onto the boat?"

Dad sighed. "Paisley, got tell Raynee I need to speak with her -- _now._ If she's with Josh, get Kit to help you. She should be close by, behind a plant or something." He sat the boys down and continued his lecture as I returned to the pool. Raynee was still sitting there, chatting animatedly with Josh. She saw me as I approached, but only rolled her eyes at Josh. I knew that she was telling him something about how _annoying_ I was, and blah, blah, blah. Josh laughed. Yes, I'd been right. I walked right up to her and opened my mouth to speak -- and Raynee dumped her diet soda all over me.

"Oops," she said, sugar-sweet.

I glared at her. "Dad wants to talk to you," I said, grabbing a napkin and trying to blot some of the diet Coke off of my white tank top.

"I'm busy," said Raynee, turning back to Josh.

"Doing what?"

"Go away, Paisley."

"Dad wants to talk to you," I said.

"Go _away!_"

"Dad wants to talk to you," I repeated, attempting the broken-record technique. After a minute or so of this, she whipped her head around to glare at me.

"Shut _up,_ Paisley," she whispered furiously. "Go and find the twins. I don't know where they are."

"That's why Dad wants to talk to you," I told her. "The twins were going to jump off the boat because the pool was too crowded. I don't think you did a very good job of taking care of them. You were too busy talking to your precious _Josh._" I spoke his name spitefully. Raynee threw one anxious glance at Josh, and then she did the one thing she'd never done to me. Ever.

She slapped me.

And then, without even a second glance, she turned back to Josh and continued whatever story she'd been telling him before I arrived.

I stared at her, my cheek stinging, vaguely aware of Kit's ice-blue eyes staring at me from behind a potted plant. I'd suddenly become an ice statue. I stood there in shock for a few minutes. Raynee's sparkling blue eyes never strayed from Josh; Kit's eyes stayed on me the whole time. After a few minutes, I felt Kit's hand close around my wrist and tug gently. I willed my legs to move; they refused. Finally, Kit managed to drag me away, to the elevator, back to our cabin. Kit went to tell Dad what had happened. I sat numbly on my bed, waiting for her to return. As I sat there, my shock finally passed, only to be replaced with a wave of hot anger.

How could Raynee _do _that to me?

I stood up and stalked across the cabin to Raynee's bed. I flung open the suitcase beside her bed and pulled out some clothes. A shirt was flung onto the bed, followed by a dress, then a pair of shorts... Soon enough, the room was covered with Raynee's clothes. Next, I walked stiffly into the bathroom and emptied all of her eyeshadows onto the cold tile floor, carefully avoiding Kit's things, and my own. I grabbed the six bottles of perfume that she had brought with her and returned to the main room, spraying all six bottles -- nearly full, expensive perfumes, they were -- all over her things. I went back to the bathroom and put the plug down in the sink. Then I emptied all of Raynee's shampoos and conditioners and face wash and soaps into the sink. It all stayed there, all mixed together. I left the bathroom and padded over to her bedside table, pulling out her iPod and laptop. I snatched her hair straightener from her suitcase as I went back to my bed, depositing the things in my own drawer and then returning to hers. And then I pulled out the greatest treasure I'd found yet.

Raynee's diary.

It crossed my mind how evil I was being. But then, as Kit always said, _What are little sisters for?_

The pink pages were full of girly X's and O's and hearts and "Mrs Spencer Norris" and "Mrs Robert Gallaghy" and, from the past couple of days, "Mrs Josh Telson."

Just as I put the point of Raynee's beautiful, pink fountain pen to the pretty pink paper, the door swung open and Kit burst in. She sneezed from the overwhelming smell of perfume, then looked around the room in awe.

"Jillian Jiggs, Jillian Jiggs," she recited dryly, then cracked up laughing. Regaining her self-control, she wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. "Seriously, Pais, what happened in here? It looks like a bomb went off." Her eyes fell upon the diary sitting open in my lap. "Is that Raynee's diary? Where'd you find it? I've been looking for it for _ever!_"

"The drawer," I said, pointing.

Kit groaned. "Of course! The most obvious place in the world. So obvious that you think, _no, she'd never put it there, she knows that I'd find it there..._" She sighed. "So, what happened in here?" she asked again.

"I was mad."

"She's gonna be pissed."

"I don't care."

Kit put a hand on my shoulder. "I'll miss you," she said solemnly. "But seriously, I'd be scared, if I were you. You'll need to protect your stuff. And, uh, sleep with one eye open. You never know what she'll try." She grinned. "Well, I'm going to go and distract her if she shows up. Keep up the good work!" She gave me a thumbs-up and disappeared out the door.

The door clicked shut behind her, and my hand shook as I wrote three little word on the next blank page of Raynee's precious pink diary, three little words in my neat, unmistakable, Disney-esque printing, three little words that described _exactly_ what I was feeling.

_I. Hate. You._

***

_**Author's Note: **__A little bit of a wait, but that was a pretty long chapter, by my standards. :P So Paisley's kinda angry, I suppose... Raynee's going to be soooo mad!!! Thanks to HPobsessssssed7 for reviewing! I'm hoping that more of my Mudblood readers will come to Paisley now... :) Yeah, so you're right, HPobsessssssed7 -- I do kinda have a thing for killing off one or both parents. I kinda decided that there were too many people in Paisley's family, so I decided that her mom died. I'm so nice, right? And everybody in this family has really unique names, or at least I think so. Lane's from a different fanfic I read, can't remember which one, I've read so many! If I have a little girl I want to name her Lane! Raynee's from a Sim (just like Elle, haha!). I wanna name a kid Raynee, too... Paisley's this adorable little eight-year-old girl I met at my dad's soccer practice a few weekends ago. She is sooooo cute! I want to name a girl that, too. (Wow, I have a lot of girls' names picked out!) And Kit's from "Failure to Launch." And Jadin's a four-year-old boy I met in Africa last March. And Chase is just a cute name! So apparently I'm having a lot of kids, if I want to use all these names. I have others, too... Mostly girls' names, but the boys have a bunch, too. Just not as unusual. For guys I have: *Clears throat importantly* Jadin. Chase. Logan. Jonathan. Jordan. Matthew. For girls I have: *Clears throat again* Briannah, Lane, Makenna, Paisley, Veralidaine (Daine), Summer, Autumn, Kit, Mikayla, Raynee, Tazmine, Cale, Elle, Hayden, Taylor, Juliana, Joelle, Stacey, Lilianna, Ashley, Kate, Lily. Apparently I'm going to be a busy mom!  
_


	5. Arrival

Chapter 5

"I can't believe you would do this to me!" shrieked Raynee. I stared back at her, emotionless. "I have a date with Josh tonight! I know what happened -- Kit was spying on us, as usual, and told you as soon as she saw you, and the both of you decided to ruin it for me!" A tear rolled down her cheek, but she brushed it away angrily. "You didn't think that maybe I'm _happy_ with Josh, you didn't think at all! How am I supposed to look good for my date tonight? I'll just have to borrow _your_ things, Paisley. Maybe I'll dump _them_ all over the floor, too, so that you can get a taste of your own medicine. Maybe I'll waste all of _your_ money, spraying _your_ expensive perfume all over _your_ bed. Maybe --"

"I don't wear perfume," I informed her.

She ignored me. "Maybe I'll hide _your_ hair straightener and iPod and laptop. Maybe I'll --"

"Steal _my_ nonexistent diary?" I raised an eyebrow at her. At this point, I didn't care what she did to me.

"You _stole_ my _diary?_" she exclaimed. She raced to the drawer where I had so carefully placed the diary back. She flipped anxiously through the pages and finally reached where I had written those three powerful words.

She looked up at me slowly. "You know what, Paisley Nichols? I hate you, too!"

And with that, she stormed out of the cabin.

Kit and I followed her for her date; it was supposed to be dinner and a movie, but they reached the place where someone had told them the movie theatre was and it appeared to be nonexistent, so the date was cut in half. The dinner was utterly boring. As a waiter approached Josh with the bill, Kit and I raced out of the restaurant and back to the cabin, collapsing onto our beds. I pulled out my laptop and signed onto MSN in one minute flat, and Kit lay on her bed and turned on the TV to the middle of one of her favourite shows. When Raynee entered the room a few minutes later, she didn't seem suspicious at all. She had a goofy smile on her face and locked herself in the bathroom. I heard the shower turn on, then her trying to sing. I looked at Kit, who buried her face in her pillow so that Raynee wouldn't hear her laughter.

***

Soon enough, the cruise was over. We packed our things back into the car, and I prepared for a solid three and a half weeks of being crammed into the station wagon with Raynee and the twins. Kit and Dad wouldn't be so bad, aside from Dad insisting on the oldies radio station.

It took several minutes to organize who was sitting where in the car. Raynee ended up in the passenger seat, the twins in the back seat. Kit and I were crammed into the back together, where Dad had installed seatbelts after the twins were born. We sat facing towards the middle, our backs to the sides of the car, surrounded by suitcases. It wasn't too bad, because I had room for my laptop on my lap, and my bag was within reach, so I could get to my books easily. Raynee seemed to think that it was some kind of punishment, but she was too absorbed in grief over leaving Josh that she didn't notice that we were doing just fine amongst the piles of bags.

The drive across Canada flew by in a blur of typing out long emails to Kate during the day, sending them at night, and driving for hours at a time, only stopping for bathroom breaks, meals, and hotels. We sometimes stopped at big tourist places, like Niagara Falls, where we welcomed the chance to stretch our legs, but we never stayed for too long. As the fourth week of driving drew to a close, bringing the beginning of November with it, we were driving onto another boat; but this time, the ride would be only two and a half hours.

The ferryboat from Vancouver to Victoria wasn't nearly as big as the cruise ship. There were a few levels for cars at the bottom of the boat, then three levels on top of those, all of which had many passenger seats on them. There was a cafeteria, a buffet, a gift shop, an arcade and a little playground area for the kids, with carpeted walls and a wooden floor, which I thought was opposite what it should be. Chase and Jadin turned their noses up at the play area and headed straight to the arcade. Raynee went to sit on the top deck and scope out boys while Kit and I went to the cafeteria. We hadn't eaten since eleven o'clock in the morning, and now it was dinner time.

Soon they were announcing that we were approaching Swartz Bay and for all passengers to return to their vehicles. Kit and I met Dad, Raynee and the boys at the car, climbing back into our previous places. There was a _bump_ as the ferry docked, and then the big doors opened and we started to drive off.

We sped along the highway for a little while, then came to a stoplight where we turned left and started up a big hill. At the top, we turned right, went straight for a bit, and turned right again, and then we were pulling into the driveway of a big yellow house with a large front porch, a green lawn, and a dark red door. The moving van, which had been following us this whole time, parked on the street in front of the house, and we dragged our suitcases up the stone stairs, then up the wooden ones onto the porch, and Dad took the key out of the mailbox and opened the door.

The house was all dark inside. Dad flicked a switch next to the door and the lights in the front hall turned on.

The floor was a mahogany-coloured wood, with cheery, yellow walls. The stairs led up to the second floor, and at the foot of the stairs was a white door. Dad opened it and began the tour with the basement.

The main room of the basement was huge, with a door on the end that led into the garage. There was another door into the bathroom and, next to it, the door into what would be Raynee's bedroom. Dad led us back upstairs and took us into the big kitchen. The counters were granite, and a bunch of little potlights in the ceiling lit the kitchen so that there wasn't one corner in shadow. The wood floor changed to carpet midway for the family room, which had a fireplace and tall, skinny windows that looked out into the big backyard. The living room was through a glass door next to the fridge. It had another fireplace, and its windows were pointed towards the front of the couch. A set of double glass doors let us back into the front hall. Dad showed us the laundry room and, next to it, the office, which was being transformed into my room. He took us upstairs and into the master bedroom, with the big bathroom off of it that would belong to him. Then the twins' room, which wasn't too small but would be pretty cramped once the bunk bed was brought in. It had two little closets with a windowseat in between. The twins grinned mischievously and said that they could spy on the neighbours out their window, for it was level with a window in the house next door. I prayed that it wasn't a bedroom or a bathroom. Then we went into Kit's room, right next to the twins'. It had two little windows in the corner and a good-sized closet. The bathroom right next to it had leaf-green walls and a cold, white tile floor.

The moving people started to bring in our things. We had blankets and pillows and everything else we could possibly need -- except for most of the furniture. Dad had ordered new furniture, but it hadn't arrived yet, and we'd left our old beds and couches in England. So for tonight, we had a family sleepover in the empty family room, laying out blankets and making hot chocolate before bed.

When I woke up the next day, it was almost noon. Kit sat on the island in the middle of the kitchen with a glass of water. The twins and Dad were nowhere in sight, and Raynee was still sleeping soundly. It was a Friday. Dad had left a sticky-note on the fridge saying that we were to stay home and that he'd gone to the grocery store. I hoped he knew where that was.

The doorbell rang. Raynee shot up in her makeshift bed, eyes flying open before she realized that it was just the doorbell. I went to answer the door; Kit followed me into the front hall.

Dad stood on the front porch with the twins, the three of them all practically _dripping_ with white plastic grocery bags. I stifled a laugh and relieved Chase of his load. Kit took some of the bags of Jadin's hands. We held the door open so that Dad could step into the house, shut the front door and took the groceries to the kitchen. Within minutes, the empty fridge and freezer had been stuffed as full as we could get them. I glanced at Raynee; she had fallen asleep again.

Moments later, the doorbell rang again. Raynee sat up even faster than she had before, and Kit laughed and went to get the door. A man with a clipboard stood there. Dad signed, and a team of men started to unload beds, couches, chairs and desks from a big white truck. They put everything in clumps in the center of the rooms that Dad directed them to, climbed back into the truck, and zoomed off.

"All right," said Dad. "This is going to be a group effort. Meaning, everyone has to help out. Let's start with the family room."

So we all pushed and pulled a two couches, an end table, and the widescreen TV into position. We set a lamp on the end table, put a phone next to it, and placed a tall light in the corner. Then we moved onto the living room. It took us until dinner time, but we managed to organize the entire house, and that night we settled down to sleep in our own beds, in our own rooms.

And after the weekend passed, it would be our first day of school in Canada.

***

_**Author's Note: **__Overall, not too eventful as chapters go, but they've arrived at their new house now! I didn't make up the house; I stole my friend's house. I've decided that they moved. Not out of town or anything. Maybe across the street or something. But I wanted to use their house because there's enough rooms for all of Paisley's family. It would've been better if my house had enough rooms, because I could describe it better and Paisley could have my room, which is an awesome room, if I do say so myself. :) Thanks to HPobsessssssed7 for reviewing, and to anybody that's added this story to their story alerts!_


	6. Guide

Chapter 6

"Paisley..."

"Five more minutes," I groaned, rolling over and burying my face in the pillow.

"Paisley, get up," commanded Dad from the other side of the door.

"I'm still tired," I complained.

"Don't make me come in there," he threatened me.

"Fine." I sat up in bed. Then I realized -- this wasn't a hotel room, this wasn't the boat, this wasn't my old house. Where was I?

Oh, yes. In the length of the trip, I'd almost forgotten that we wouldn't be living out of the back of our car, or on the cruise ship, anymore. We had arrived in Victoria, British Columbia, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island.

"Get dressed," ordered Dad. "I'm making waffles." I heard his footsteps padding down the hallway away from my door. My stomach growled eagerly.

First day of school. When I was younger -- four or so -- I had awaited this day excitedly. My first day of kindergarten, of going to school every day, even if kindergarten was only half of the regular school day. I loved the first day of the school, getting to wear my newest clothes and see all my friends that I hadn't seen over the summer. But now... now it was a strange, unknown feeling. A sort of eagerness, but mixed with dread and tinged with sadness. Sadness at probably never being able to see my old friends again. I could phone them, email them, talk to them on MSN and Skype, but unless I paid my own way back across Canada and the Atlantic Ocean, I'd never see them again.

I swung my legs out of bed and went across to my multitude of boxes and suitcases to find something suitable to wear. I glanced out the window; it was the middle of October and the weather here was turning cold, rainy and wet. I picked out a plaid skirt with many different colours in it -- black, grey, pink, purple. Then I got black leggings, a pink tank top, and a purple scarf with little silver threads woven into it. I put a pair of grey boots by the front door so that I wouldn't forget to wear them. I straightened my long, dark red hair and put on a pair of big silver hoops, then went into the kitchen for breakfast.

Raynee, Kit and the twins were sitting in tall, white chairs at the island while Dad stood at the counter, piling waffles onto a plate. I took the last remaining chair, between Kit and Jadin, and Dad gave everyone a waffle.

After breakfast, Dad drove us all to school. Chase and Jadin were at elementary school, which started at 8:40 AM, twenty minutes before high school started, so we went there first. Down the hill in the station wagon, Kit and I sitting in the very back again, which didn't have any suitcases in it anymore. There were twenty minutes before Chase and Jadin's school started when we pulled into the parking lot. All of the little kids on the swings stared at us as we started up the steps into the school, which was painted robin-egg blue with darker blue accents.

"How can I help you?" said a woman behind the desk in the office who looked like the type of grandmother that sent you cookies in the mail for your birthday. The nameplate on the desk read "E. Mitchell."

"I enrolled my sons here, Chase and Jadin Nichols," said Dad, and the lady's eyes lit up.

"Oh, yes!" she gushed. "One moment, please!" She opened a drawer and flicked through the file folders inside before removing a bright red one. "Here we are! Nichols. Chase and Jadin, grade four, is that correct?" She didn't wait for an answer. "They'll be in the same class," she informed Dad. "Mr Cape, room six. You can't miss it. Take a left out of the office, it's third on the right after the library."

Everything was either old or tiny. There were no lockers like there were in middle school and high school; instead, rows of hooks lined the hallways, complete with stickers -- white, yellow border, red apple in the corner. On each sticker, somebody had neatly written each student's name. _Alyssa. Jordan. Carter. Ainslie..._ We passed a sign that read 'Staff Room.' The door was closed. The door to the gym was open. It was tiny, with thick black lines painted on the floor and wooden benches along the wall. One wall was a stage with a musty red curtain. The curtain was open, but instead of the empty floor I expected, the stage was filled with heaps of chairs and tables and desks and who-knows-what-else. We moved on, passing the library -- a space about as big as our new kitchen and family room put together. The mismatching shelves were filled with old picture books that probably had lots of ripped pages.

One... Two... Three...

"Here we are," said Dad, stopping next to a dark blue door. On one side of the door were the usual labeled hooks. _Haleigh. Jaryd. Emmalynn. _On the other side of the door was a long line of ukuleles hanging on the wall by thick purple ribbons attached to them. The door was open, but Dad knocked anyways. A middle-aged man got up from his desk and came to the door. His greying hair was cut short and his dark eyes were magnified by the lenses of his glasses, giving the impression of a deer in headlights.

"Hello," he said cheerily. "I am Mr Cape. And you..." He peered at the twins. "You must be my new students!"

"Yes," said Dad. "This is Chase, and this is Jadin."

Dad and Mr Cape talked for a few more minutes. Mr Cape pulled a Sharpie out of his shirt pocket and a pad of stickers out of a drawer in his desk. He ambled out into the hallway and selected two empty hooks. With shaking hands, he wrote 'Chase' on one and 'Jadin' on the other, then stuck them to the wall above each hook. Chase and Jadin took off their raincoats and backpacks and hung them up excitedly. Mr Cape took them into the classroom. The twins waved goodbye to us as they went, and then we piled back into the station wagon and drove back up the hill to the high school.

The high school was painted a multitude of mismatching colours -- off-white, pale pink, blue, green. There was still almost half an hour to go until school started, but the sidewalk outside was lined with chattering students. We parked and went into the school. Everyone was too busy talking to their friends to notice us. We went straight to the office.

The nameplate on this desk read "B. Hogg." The lady behind it looked almost the same as the secretary at the elementary school.

Dad explained that we were enrolled for the rest of the school year and this lady's eyes lit up just like the other one's. She pulled out a file folder -- this one was green -- and started pulling papers out of it. She handed Raynee, Kit and I all a map, a sheet of courses, teachers and room numbers, and several slips of paper with locker numbers and lists of textbooks to get from the library. She gave us each a box with a combination lock and a slip of paper with the combination. Then she turned back to her computer and didn't look at us again. We stood there for a moment, unsure of what to do, then turned around and walked out of the office. The front hall was packed with people.

"Well," said Raynee, "bye, Dad!" And she shooed him out the front door of the school. The second he was gone, she took a minute to memorize her map and set off down the hall.

I glanced at Kit. "Library first?"

She nodded and we set off down the hall. Through the student lounge, a big room full of brightly coloured tables and benches and students. Around the corner and into the library. A kindly-looking, slightly chubby lady with glasses and short black hair greeted us from behind a desk.

"How can I help you?"

"Um, we're new... We need textbooks," said Kit.

"Ah. Right this way!" And she led us down the wooden counter and into a little room full of textbooks. She sat down at a computer.

"Names?"

"Paisley Nichols," I said.

"Katherine Nichols," Kit said. She hated her full name.

The lady looked at our course lists and signed our textbooks out to us, and we left the library a few minutes later. We followed the map to our lockers. Take a right out of the library. Take a left at the end of the hall. Locker number 595. I stopped next to 595. Kit's locker was two down from mine, 593. Our lockers were grey. Every four or five or six lockers along, there was a locker painted dark turquoise. The other side of the hall had fire-engine-red lockers. My locker had large letters carved into it, spelling _DICK._

"Great," I muttered. Kit's locker was perfectly fine. I took my lock out of its box and spun the dial to open it. 37. 12. 24. The lock clicked open. I shut it again and tried it again, just to make sure I had it, then put the lock on the locker. I opened it yet again and opened the creaky door of my locker. I put my raincoat and most of my textbooks into the locker. I examined my course sheet. English, room 321, Miss Hooper.

"See you at lunch," said Kit, and went downstairs to the math wing while I climbed the stairs to the third floor for English.

The classroom was nearly empty. There were still fifteen minutes left until the first block began. There were three students, aside from me, in the classroom, all grouped around a desk in the back corner of the room. The teacher, a thin, blonde woman, probably in her mid-twenties, sat behind her desk, her eyes scanning the computer screen in front of her. She looked up as I approached the desk. "Ah, you must be the new student I just got an email about," she said. "I'm Miss Hooper."

"Paisley Nichols," I replied.

She nodded. "Of course. You can take this desk here," she said, pointing to the desk directly in front of hers. "Have you gone to the library to get your_ Inside Stories II_ textbook?"

I nodded mutely and sat down.

I waited in silence as the class began to fill with chattering students. The only person that wasn't talking was a pretty girl with bronze-coloured curls pulled back into a high ponytail. Her chocolate-brown eyes surveyed the classroom. The bell rang with a soft _ding, ding, ding_ and the class fell silent as Miss Hooper went to the front of the classroom.

"We have a new student!" she said by way of greeting her class. I slid down in my chair, wishing I could disappear. "This is Paisley Nichols," she said, gesturing towards me. Everyone stared at me. "She comes from England. I need a volunteer to show her around the school. Anyone?"

The class was silent.

"I'll have to pick someone," she warned.

Nobody moved.

"Fine," Miss Hooper muttered, scanning the rows of desks. "Renesmee Cullen. You'll be Paisley's guide until she knows her way around."

A boy laughed. I followed everyone's gazes to the back of the classroom, where the bronze-haired girl sat. She stared at me with no emotion in her face whatsoever. Miss Hooper called our attention back to her and class began.

When the bell rang to signal the end of block one, I pulled out my course sheet. Block two... Social Studies, room 338, Mr Cardinal.

"What's your next class?"

I looked up. Renesmee Cullen was standing in front of me. Ah, yes. My guide.

"Socials. Mr Cardinal."

"That's my next class, too. Come on."

She led me down the packed hallway and into another classroom. The class was already half-full. Renesmee led me to the front of the classroom, where a tall, older-looking man was standing.

"Mr Cardinal?" she said. "This is a new student from England. Paisley Nichols."

Mr Cardinal squinted at me. "Yes. Miss Nichols. I received an email. Darn technology... Pick a seat."

Renesmee took to a desk and sat down at it. I stood there uncertainly. She pointed to the desk beside hers and I sat down. Mr Cardinal began a lecture and I turned my attention to the front of the classroom.

The bell rang again, almost an hour and a half later.

"You can sit with my family and I at lunch, if you like," offered Renesmee.

"I promised my sister I'd meet up with her for lunch," I told her.

"She can sit with us, too." She followed me down to my locker, where Kit stood, waiting.

"Hi, I'm Renesmee Cullen," said Renesmee to Kit. "Miss Hooper assigned me to be Paisley's guide."

"Kit Nichols," said Kit.

"We're sitting with Renesmee and her family for lunch," I told Kit. Renesmee led us down the hall and down half a flight of stairs to a landing, where a large group of people sat.

"Hi, guys!" said Renesmee brightly, portraying some emotion for the first time since I had met her. "This is Paisley Nichols, from England, and her sister, Kit."

"She has another sister," announced a pale, muscular boy with dark hair. "Raynee. She's in my science class. She's pretty."

A girl with long blonde hair hit him gently on the arm.

"Introductions," muttered Renesmee. "All right. That one's Emmett," she said, pointing to the muscular boy who had mentioned Raynee. "That's Rosalie." The blonde one. "And Jacob..." Another very muscular boy, with smooth dark skin and short black hair. "And Rosalie's twin brother, Jasper." A pale boy with honey-blond hair. "They're all grade twelve. Then, in grade eleven, there's Alice" -- a petite girl with short, dark hair and the same pale skin as the rest of them -- "and Momma and Daddy --" A girl with dark brown hair and a boy with bronze hair the same colour as Renesmee raised their eyebrows at her. "I mean, they're not my _real_ parents," she continued hastily. "My brother, EJ, he isn't here yet. But we're twins, and Edward's our older brother. After our real parents died, we were in an orphanage for a really long time, and Edward was like our dad. When Carlisle and Esme adopted the three of us all together, Bella kind of became our mom. Carlisle and Esme are technically our parents now, though." Edward, the bronze-haired boy, relaxed.

"Why can't the vending machines have _real_ drinks?" complained another boy, arriving with a slice of pizza in one hand and a can of diet soda in the other. Then he noticed Kit and I. "Who are they?"

"New students," explained Alice in a musical voice. "They're from England. Paisley's in your grade, and Kit's grade nine. They have an older sister, too. Raynee. Grade twelve."

The boy nodded and sat down beside Renesmee.

"This is EJ," Renesmee told Kit and I. "Really it's Edward-Jacob, but he gets really mad at you if you call him that." She grinned mischievously at her brother, who looked very similar to her, aside from the fact that his short hair was dark brown.

Kit struck up conversation with the Cullens immediately. She'd eaten up their story. But I didn't believe a word of it. Not a word.

Well, maybe their names.

***

_**Author's Note: **__Finally, the Twilight-ness has arrived! I used my old elementary school AND my high school, haha. :) Plus Miss Hooper was my English teacher last year. But Mr Cardinal is made up. Same with Mr Cape. And the locker 395 in my school really does have "DICK" carved into it. It was my friend's locker last year. Anyways, thanks to my sole reviewer, HPobsessssssed7. 3  
_


	7. Friends

Chapter 7

Days passed. Every day, Kit and I ate lunch with Renesmee, EJ, and their family. I didn't talk to anyone about my not believing the Cullens' story, not even to Kate. I still talked to Kate every night, but now it wasn't carefree. I talked to her while I was doing my homework, and I often forgot that I was talking to her while I was typing up an essay or something. Over the next couple of weeks, I grew used to the time-change from England to Canada. On many nights, I would fall asleep with my textbook as a pillow. The weather was cold, but Raynee, Kit and I walked to school every day. Kit and I timed the walk to school one day, trying to figure out if we would have enough time to go home at lunch time, eat, and go back to school in time for third period. Exactly seven minutes' walk from the house to the front door of the school, we discovered. If we walked home for lunch, we would have to grab something from the fridge or cupboard, pack it into a plastic bag, and eat it on the way back to school. So this plan was out.

After a few days, Renesmee asked us to call her Nessie. "Less of a mouthful," she explained.

I had noticed that the Cullens hardly ever ate. That is, all of them except for Nessie, EJ and Jacob hardly ever ate. Jacob ate for all of lunchtime, stuffing the last few bites of food into his mouth as he said goodbye and headed off to his next class. Nessie and EJ ate less, but still ate, even if they ate only a grape or two every day. But the rest of their adoptive brothers and sisters never ate anything at all. Oh, yes, they had food in front of them when we arrived at the bottom of the stairs and sat down, but they didn't touch or even look at the food the whole time. Come the end of lunch, they would simply pick up their untouched food and dump it into the nearest yellow trash can.

Somehow, the name _Cullen_ sounded familiar. I didn't know where I'd heard it before. I thought and thought about it for several days and nights before it finally clicked.

One of Lane's friends... Cassie Day, I think. Yes. Cassie's parents had divorced just before Lane and Cassie became friends in their ninth grade, five years ago, and her father had moved halfway across the country. To a small town in the United States called Forks, I think it was. And every summer, Cassie flew out to visit with her father for a month and a half. She always returned with stories about this strange family called the Cullens.

Cullen.

How many had Cassie said there were? The father figure, Dr Cullen. His wife. Five kids. And the youngest boy was dating the police chief's daughter. Cassie had thought there was something odd about this girl, some secret she was keeping. What was it the girl's name had been? Beth? Blaise?

Bella.

So what? The Cullens had moved to Victoria a couple of years ago. They could be the same people that were in Forks when Cassie used to visit her father there. But if Bella already had a father -- the chief of police in Forks -- why would the Cullens have adopted her? This could only mean one thing.

Their whole story was a lie.

Briefly, lying there in my bed, staring up at the ceiling, I congratulated myself on not even believing the Cullens' story in the beginning. Then I turned to the next question that popped into my head -- what was their _real_ story?

I puzzled over this for a while before finally falling asleep. Over the next day or so, I tried to come up with an answer, _any_ answer. But it all came down to the fact that I would have to find out for myself, somehow. I didn't know how I was going to discover whatever secrets the Cullens were hiding, but I knew that I had to find out. If I didn't know, it would eat away at me. I was that type of nosy, curious person. I had to find out every little detail before I could sit back and relax.

Maybe if I got closer to their family, I could figure it out. For now, my best shot was Nessie. And so, the next day, I decided to invite her over to my house after school. When I asked Dad over breakfast, he responded like any parent would in this situation.

"Sure, honey. I think it's great that you're making new friends."

Miss Hooper, the English teacher, looked up and smiled at me when I walked into the classroom that morning. The usual four students were already in the classroom; the three friends that didn't speak to anyone outside of their little circle -- Gabriella, Daniel and Crystal. And Nessie. I put my books on my desk and my bag beside my chair and went to the back of the classroom where Nessie sat, immersed in a book.

"Hi," I said, sitting down in an unoccupied chair beside her. She looked up, said a quiet hello, and put her bookmark into the book before looking at me expectantly, as if she knew that I had something to say. "Do you want to come over to my house after school?" I asked quickly.

Nessie smiled at me. "I'd love to. I'll have to ask Esme."

That was another thing about her family -- what with all of the children being adopted, or whatever they were, they called the doctor and his wife by name. Nessie stood up, pulled her sleek, silver cell phone out of a pocket in her bag, and walked out of the classroom, dialing as she went. I remained where I was, waiting for her to return.

"I can come," she said when she did, sliding back into her seat and opening her book again.

I grinned. The bell rang and I went back to my desk as class began.

At lunch, the friendly chatter was the same as usual.

"Hi, Emilys," grinned Emmett as two girls walked past. One had long, blonde, curly hair, the other medium-brown, shorter hair.

"I am my own individual!" shouted the brown-haired one, pushing the door open and following the other Emily outside. Emmett chuckled.

After my last class of the day -- Drama -- Nessie was waiting for me at my locker. She waited patiently, silently, as I got ready to go, and we walked out of the school and into the light rain.

"How long does it take to walk to your house?" asked Nessie as we walked down the crowded sidewalk.

"Seven minutes," I replied immediately.

"That's kind of random, that you know _exactly_," she said, chuckling.

"Kit and I wanted to see if we'd be able to go home at lunch once in a while," I tried to explain.

As if on cue, Kit ran up beside us and said a breathless hello. "I didn't know you'd left already," she mumbled as we continued to walk. "I was waiting and waiting for you, and then I decided that you'd already left, so I went to try and catch up to you. And here I am!" she finished pointlessly.

When we reached the house, Raynee was already home. Nessie and I had a snack -- that is, I had a snack, and Nessie had a glass of water and three crackers. There was an awkward moment after that. Then Nessie suggested going outside.

"But it's raining," I objected. I didn't really have a problem with the rain, but most people I knew did. In fact, I loved the rain. Unless it was some kind of downpour. But a light rain like this one was okay. All of my friends back home, aside from Kate, hated the rain. They complained that it ruined their hair, and got their clothes all wet, and so on.

"So? I love the rain," said Nessie. "Don't you?"

So we ran out into the backyard and stayed out there for an hour and a half, until Dad got home from the job he'd gotten at some office downtown and yelled out the window for us to come inside for dinner.

Dinner was strange. Nobody spoke for a while. There was only the sound of fork on plate until Chase and Jadin spoke up about some kid who pulled down his pants in the middle of the soccer field at lunch and got sent to the office. That seemed to trigger the conversation. When dinner was over, Kit and I cleared the table while Nessie scraped most of her food into the garbage can under the sink. I had looked at her plate towards the end of dinner; it appeared that she had eaten a few bites of mashed potatoes and six beans, leaving her steak untouched. I wondered if she was a vegetarian.

Nessie and I went into my room and sat there, talking and drawing pictures, until her adoptive mother pulled into the driveway. I stood up on my bed and looked out the window, squinting through the leaves of the tree in front of the porch that blocked most of the driveway from sight. A black Mercedes. A door slammed and a figure came up the steps and knocked at the front door. I heard Dad answering the door and then he poked his head into my room.

"Renesmee's mother is here," he said, and withdrew.

Mrs Cullen was young, probably in her mid-twenties, with caramel-coloured hair that fell in soft waves just past her shoulders. She had a motherly look about her. She smiled when she saw Nessie and thanked Dad for letting Nessie stay for dinner.

After Nessie and Mrs Cullen were gone, I did my homework and talked to Kate on MSN.

_paisley23: I had some1 over 2day.  
__kateluvsthesun: Replacing me so soon?__  
paisley23: I could never replace u, Kate. I swear.  
kateluvsthesun: JK, JK. Don't worry.  
kateluvsthesun: So who did u have over?  
paisley23: This girl Renesmee.  
kateluvsthesun: That's a strange name... I like it tho.  
paisley23: Yep._

The conversation then turned to the usual exchange of news about school and everything. Liliana was still annoying the living daylights out of Kate, according to Kate, but she was known to exaggerate sometimes.

The next day was sunny. I smiled when I looked out the window and went into the kitchen grinning so wide that my cheeks began to feel numb. Raynee glared at me. So far, she hadn't done anything to retaliate for bugging her and Josh on the cruise. I was pretty sure that she was still talking to Josh over MSN and Facebook, even though Dad had forbidden her to get a Facebook account. She had this trick that she'd told me back in England, when we were still being nice to her. She'd have a website that she was allowed to be on in another window and switch to it the second that Dad walked into the room. He never looked at the titles of other windows hard enough to see the "Facebook" in big letters. Maybe that was where Raynee got her searching skills -- or lack thereof -- from.

Nessie came over three more times that week. We were undoubtedly closer, but I didn't know where that was getting me on my mission to find out the Cullens' secret. I kept wondering if she would invite me to her house, but she never did, and my parents had taught me at an early age that it was rude to invite yourself over to someone else's house. So I continued to wait. Someday, it would happen. I told myself that once it did, I would know all about the Cullens. Someday.

***

_**Author's Note: **__Sorry it's been a while, dance took over my life again... If anyone was wondering about the Emily thing about halfway through the chapter, I'll explain now. My friend Emily wanted Emmett to know her... So I had to come up with a way to put her in my story. Emily and another girl, Emmalee, sit together in English in my last block class. I sit right behind them, and if I want their attention I just say, "Emilys!" and their reactions are usually as follows: Emmalee -- turns around to face me, grinning from ear to ear. Emily -- "I am my own individual!" So yeah. This chapter is dedicated to my Emilys, if they ever read this story. Actually, I'm emailing the link to Emily so she, at least, should read it at some point. Anyways... _


	8. Sunshine

Chapter 8

We hadn't even been living in Canada for a month, and Raynee had already landed a job at a popular clothing store in the nearest shopping mall. Dad got a job working for some construction company. When he told us this news, Kit threw her head back and laughed uncontrollably for at _least_ ten minutes. The twins shouted something along the lines of "Cool!" and Raynee snorted audibly. I tried to hold my laughter inside, but it didn't really work too well.

Christmas was approaching fast, and for once, I didn't really want anything. Except to know the Cullens' secret.

Although the sun was long gone, the endless rain was showing no signs of freezing and changing into snow. The thing I hoped for most was exactly that, but I probably wouldn't get my wish. I never got anything that I wished for. But one day, I got a surprise. I woke up to blinding sunlight outside. It was nothing like the winter wonderland I'd been hoping for (not that it was even winter yet), but it was a welcome change from the pattering of rain on every outdoor surface. However, when I stepped outside, I had to run back inside for a jacket; the air was crisp and cool. The cold wind whipped into my face as I walked to school with Kit and Raynee.

Raynee and I hardly spoke anymore. So far, Raynee had done absolutely nothing to take her revenge, but I was still making an effort to be careful. You never knew when she would strike.

Nessie wasn't at school that day. At lunch, Kit and I went down to the usual place where we ate, but nobody was there. I added this to the growing list in my head. Pale. Beautiful. Anti-social. Don't eat...

"Where were you?" I asked Nessie the second I walked into English two days later. The sun was now covered up by clouds and a light rain was falling outside.

"Carlisle's family was visiting," she explained. "Tanya and Kate, and Eleazar and Carmen. Oh, and Kate's fiancŽ, Garrett."

"How long did they come for?" I asked curiously.

"Two days. They got here Sunday afternoon and headed back up to Alaska last night." Nessie pulled her homework out of her bag as the bell rang and I reeturned to my own desk, puzzling over the Cullens' absence in the past couple of days. Nessie's explanation covered everything. And she hadn't seemed like she was fabricating anything. Of course, she was probably a good actor. The Cullens seemed to be good at everything.

This led me to believe that maybe this was just an extention to the story I'd heard on the first day I'd come to this school. What had been the _real_ reason that none of the Cullens came to school those days?

I felt a little bit bad that I automatically assumed that the Cullens were lying. But I had a strange feeling that they were hiding something. Something _big._

***

Over the next couple of days, I tried to get closer to my goal of figuring out the Cullens' secret. I didn't get much further. We continued to receive random days of sunlight on the island, and each time, the Cullens would be nowhere to be found. Each time, Nessie would feed me some story that my brain refused to believe was the truth. One day, Esme needed everyone to stay home and help her paint Edward's piano room. Another day, Edward was sick and couldn't drive them to school. A stretch of five sunny days in a row was a "road trip." The excuses dragged on, and I grew tired of acting like I believed them.

One Tuesday, the grey clouds refused to release their hold on the raindrops in their midst. Nessie and I were sitting in my backyard on an old quilt. We had a large stack of books we'd gathered from around the house (underneath a raincoat, just in case), and we each had a glass of lemonade. Mine was nearly empty, Nessie's practically untouched. I'd grown somewhat used to this. We were laughing about something some guy had said in Social Studies that day when Alice appeared around the corner of the house. Nessie grinned and waved to her, but Alice, unusually, didn't seem in the mood for cheeriness. She looked worried. She stared at Nessie, then up at the slowly parting clouds, frantically trying to convey some message. Nessie's eyes widened as she understood whatever it was that Alice was trying to tell her.

Nessie jumped up. "Let's go inside," she suggested, wrapping the raincoat around the stack of books to form some kind of sack. She picked up the makeshift bag and her full glass of lemonade.

I glanced up at the sky. "But the sun's just starting to come out," I objected.

As if on cue, the sunlight poured down into the backyard, and three things happened simultaneously. Nessie made to move in front of me, as if to hide something. Alice's mouth opened and she took a half a step backwards, but not enough to be hidden from sight. And then Alice began to sparkle.

***

_**Author's Note: **__Sorry it's so short! Not even 1000 words; so disappointing! But I just HAD to give you guys a cliffhanger... Of a sort... XD Don't hate me! You can threaten me if you like, though. I find threats amusing. Unless, of course, they AREN'T amusing... Well, this changes things! I'd originally planned for Paisley to almost get hit by a bus or something and somebody saves her (not saying who, although you may be able to guess!), but that is just too reminiscent of Twilight... :P Thanks __**HPobsessssssed7**__ and __**Mr Magi**__ for reviewing! And now, onto "Danger"!!!_


	9. Forest

Chapter 9

I stared at the two of them in shock, Alice frozen in surprise, halfway around the corner of the house, Nessie standing above me, looking down anxiously. I could see Alice around Nessie's leg. She stood there, sparkling, like there were tiny diamonds embedded in her skin, throwing rainbows onto the side of the yellow house. My head snapped up to focus on Nessie's face. The sun was now almost directly above Nessie's head, and all I could see of her was a silhouette against the bright sky behind her. Impossible to make out her face. But it was still easy to tell the one thing that mattered. Nessie was _glowing._ I could see that, even with the sun shining brilliantly around her. Glowing.

I would have stumbled backwards, but I was still seated on the blanket, the still-damp-from-the-rain grass soaking through the fabric. Instead my body seemed to be going into overdrive, my heart pumping blood through my body like my life depended on it -- which it did, but that wasn't what I was concentrating on at that particular moment -- and the rest of my body frozen, like Han Solo in the carbonite or whatever it was. I remembered Dad making me watch all the Star Wars movies with him and Kit six years ago. My brain wasn't functioning properly. I couldn't seem to think of anything but a stupid sci-fi movie and that I was immensely glad that Raynee and Dad were at work, Kit at basketball practice and the twins at some new friend's house.

I was still just kind of sitting there, a bump on a log. With eyes. Eyes that were still staring at a glowing Nessie and a sparkling Alice, wondering what the hell was going on. My mouth couldn't seem to form the words to ask it out loud.

"Paisley?" asked Nessie.

I couldn't do anything. I knew that she was talking to me, trying to get me to respond. I didn't move a muscle. I was vaguely aware that Alice had moved in about a millisecond from the corner of the house to a posititon right beside Nessie. Alice was tugging on Nessie's arm, her mouth moving quickly. I wasn't sure if I just couldn't hear her or if she wasn't actually saying anything. The only words that got through to me were the ones that Nessie whispered frantically to me before finally allowing Alice to pull her away.

"You can't tell anybody," she whispered, and then the two of them were gone. I heard a screech of tires that echoed off the trees around the cul-de-sac and then there was silence.

I sat there, still frozen in shock, for God knows how long. I was brought back to life when I heard the garage door opening. I looked around quickly and gathered up the books, the blanket, and the two glasses of lemonade, one empty, one full. I raced inside, spilling Nessie's lemonade all over the stone patio, and checked the clock. 5:28 PM. Nessie wasn't due to leave for another half hour.

"Hi," grunted Dad, carrying in about six full grocery bags at once. "Where's Nessie?"

For a moment there, I thought about telling him everything I'd seen. Then I remembered the desperate look on Nessie's face. _You can't tell anybody,_ she'd said.

"Sick," I lied quickly. "She left school at lunch. Esme came to pick her up..." I trailed off. Overkill, I told myself. Don't give him _too_ much information. "Stomachache," I managed. "Sore throat." Shut up _now_, I thought.

Fortunately, Dad seemed to take my word for it. He wordlessly started to unload the groceries, packing milk and eggs and sandwich meat into the fridge. I mumbled something about having a lot of homework and shut myself into my room before opening my laptop.

_kateluvsthesun: U haven't been on in a while. What's up?_

My fingers rested on the keys. I tried to think of what to say. My new friend glows in the sunlight? Her adoptive sister sparkles? What do I say?

_paisley23: Not much. U?_

_kateluvsthesun: Cold. Rain. Yuck._

_paisley23: Looking forward to Christmas?_

_kateluvsthesun: Three more weeks 2 go! I'm soooo excited! I mailed ur present yesterday!_

Crap. Presents. What do I do now? Something so simple, yet it seemed like my life was falling apart around me. Just because I forgot to get Kate a present.

_paisley23: Dang, I g2g. Talk 2 u later!_

_kateluvsthesun: Bye! Luv u! xoxoxo 3_

I signed off and just kind of sat there, wondering what I could mail to Kate.

There was a knock on my door and then Kit peeked in. "Where's Nessie?" she asked.

"Sick."

"But she was at school," Kit said confusedly.

I gave her a look that said _shut up now._ "She went home at lunch. Stomachache. Sore throat."

"But I saw her after third block," protested Kit, not taking the hint. She never read my face properly, she could never tell what I was trying to tell her telepathically.

"Kit, she was sick, she went home at lunch," I said forcefully. "Go away."

Kit looked hurt. She stood there for a minute before backing out of my room. A moment later, I heard her climbing the stairs. I made myself comfortable on my bed and got out my Social Studies homework, a stupid green worksheet that took about five minutes to fill in. Then I rolled over onto my back and stared up at the ceiling until dinner.

It was hard to fall asleep that night. I tossed and turned and finally fell asleep, but woke up several times during the night. When it was finally light outside, I practically leapt out of bed and let the two hours of sleep I'd actually gotten energize me enough to get me ready for school. It was Friday. Early dismissal. Thank God. Nessie wasn't coming over today. She never came over on Fridays.

While I wolfed down my cereal, I thought about the Cullens. I supposed I was another step closer to figuring out their secret. Raynee entered the kitchen and commented, as she did every day, on my milk-less cereal. I never poured milk over my cereal. The Frosted Flakes or Cheerios -- today it was Cheerios -- got all soggy, and it was disgusting. I finished my cereal and gulped down an entire glass of milk in less than ten seconds, then rushed out of the room to grab my clothes from my room and beat Kit to the shower upstairs. I'd just stepped under the warm water when I heard Kit pounding on the door, hollering that she had to go pee and could I hurry up. I shouted back that there was a bathroom downstairs, and she screeched something unintelligible at me through the door, and then Dad was shouting from his room that since this was the first day in two weeks that he didn't have to work at nine o'clock in the morning, could the both of us please shut up or he would knock our heads together. Then Chase and Jadin were up and yelling and Dad was shouting that Raynee was taking them to school today and Raynee was screaming that she didn't want to drive them anywhere and she had a spare first block and she was counting on being able to watch some TV show before she went to school.

Welcome to my mornings.

Of course, in the end, Raynee was shoving the twins into the station wagon and racing away down the street with Dad mumbling that he hoped she'd drive safely. Kit had kicked me out of the bathroom the second I got out of the shower, and I'd been forced to wander around wrapped in a towel until Dad got a screwdriver and busted the bathroom lock so that I could get my clothes off the counter.

I finally rushed into English class late, and Miss Hooper glanced up from her book. The class was still doing silent reading -- or, rather, half the class was reading and the other half was throwing crumpled-up balls of paper across the room and Miss Hooper was pretending not to notice -- and nobody seemed to notice me except for Crystal Schneider, who looked up and glared at me for interrupting her ever-so-important daily reading of whatever ever-so-important book she was reading.

Once during the lesson I turned around to look at Nessie, but she wasn't there. In Social Studies, her desk sat beside me, empty. Kit was eating with her new friends from the junior girls' basketball team, so I went alone to the bottom of the stairs by the lockers in the area nicknamed "the Dungeon." The floor was spotlessly clean and the Cullens were nowhere in sight.

On Monday, the same thing happened. The day after that, I arrived at English to find Nessie sitting at her desk, staring blankly at her book. I dropped my bags off at my desk and hopped onto the desk beside Nessie's.

"Hey," I said quietly.

She glanced up at me. "You didn't tell anyone, did you?" she whispered nervously. I shook my head and she relaxed visibly.

"Are you going to tell _me?_" I asked hopefully.

Nessie looked at me. "I don't know," she said. "The rest of them are still discussing. Be patient, Paisley. Rose is pretty determined that you shouldn't know, but we don't know anyone that's able to make it so you never saw it, so... I've probably already said too much." She wouldn't say another word about it for the whole day.

Then Wednesday came. "They've decided," said Nessie when I came into class. "We're going to tell you everything. Can you stay for a bit after school? I'd ask you to come to my house, but I don't know if you'll want anything to do with us after we tell you."

I swallowed and nodded. "Dad won't be home until five thirty or so," I said.

And so after school, I waved goodbye to Kit, saying that I'd forgotten my textbook in my Social Studies classroom. She offered to come back with me, but I told her to go on ahead and I'd see her at home, and she left me behind without a second thought. I rushed down to the Dungeon to meet Nessie and her family. They were all there, waiting for me.

Wordlessly, Nessie beckoned for me to follow them and we all went outside. I followed them down across the track and the soccer field and the other side of the track, and then down the thin path into the little forest beyond that. After about a minute, we stopped in a small clearing. Out of the trees appeared two forms that, when they came closer, appeared to be Esme and a tall, blond man who could only be Carlisle. The Cullens arranged themselves into a sort of loose circle around the edges of the clearing, with me beside Nessie and Jacob beside her and everyone else slightly further away from us than they were from their family members. I felt like I was going to take part in some kind of ceremony. Carlisle glanced at Edward, some kind of unspoken question in his golden eyes, those eyes just like the rest of his adopted family. Edward looked from Alice to Rosalie. Alice's eyes seemed to glaze over, like a window with the curtain drawn shut behind it, and Rosalie cocked her head to one side and looked intently at the trees, as though she were listening for something. Then the both of them gave Edward a tiny nod and Edward passed the nod onto Carlisle. I watched all of this curiously, trying to figure out what was going on. Then Carlisle spoke. I assumed that it was him who was going to tell me because he was the head of the family.

"Paisley," he said. His voice was smooth and oddly formal. "I'm Doctor Carlisle Cullen. I don't know if Renesmee has mentioned me."

Nessie nodded beside me and Jacob slipped a muscular, dark-skinned arm around her shoulders.

"Before we tell you anything, you're going to have to promise that you won't tell anyone, even if you don't want anything to do with us anymore," continued Carlisle, glancing at Rosalie.

Rosalie's face was stony and when she spoke, her voice was cold. She tossed her long blonde hair out of her face. "If you tell anyone, it could ruin everything for us," she told me. "We've got nowhere left to go after here, not for a long time."

I swallowed and got the feeling that they'd all somehow _heard_ it. "I promise," I whispered.

Nessie took a deep breath and turned away from the rest of her family to face me. "I'm supposed to tell you," she said, and I glanced back to the rest of them, but they were gone. The only thing that gave away the fact that they had been there was the grass at the edge of the path, springing back up to hide the footprint that rested there. My gut was telling me that they weren't gone, not really. "You probably know that we aren't normal," said Nessie, drawing my attention back to her. Jacob was gone, too, I realized. "Got any guesses?" She smiled weakly. I just shook my head. "It'd be kind of hard to guess," she said. "I mean, we're not exactly like what we are, really. Did that make any sense?"

I shook my head again.

Nessie bit her lip. "Here goes," she said, looking up at the tiny bit of gray sky that we could see through the treetops. She looked back to me and there was this pause where I felt my stomach dropping to my feet in preparation for whatever she was about to say. "We're... Oh, God..." There was another silence and I wanted to shout at her to hurry up and say it already. Then she opened her mouth and finally said it. "We're vampires."

"Vampires?" I said, wondering if she was pulling my leg.

She nodded. "Vampires."

I breathed out a shaky breath, trying to get the thought through my head. "Vampires. What about all the myths?"

"See, that's what I was saying before," she said, obviously relieved that I wasn't waving a clove of garlic in her face or something. "We're not exactly the kind of vampires that you hear about in all the myths. We don't burn in the sun. Wood doesn't kill us. Garlic and crosses have no effect at all." She turned around. "You guys can come out now," she said loudly.

Alice was the first to appear. "I don't see this going over too well," she said warningly.

Nessie frowned. "But she's fine," she objected.

Alice shook her head. "She's fine _now_. Wait a minute."

Edward and Bella emerged from the trees, holding hands. Bella looked worried. "She's not going to tell people, is she?"

Edward shook his head. "No. She's just going to... freak out a little. She'll get used to the idea. Alice saw it," he assured Bella.

I glanced back and forth between Edward and Bella, Alice, and the others that were starting to appear out of the trees. Rosalie dropped down from a branch right above me and I opened my mouth to scream, but somebody clapped a hand over my mouth and I didn't get the chance.

"Don't," hissed Emmett, removing his hand from my mouth. I stared at it in surprise; it had been ice cold.

Jacob shook his head at Rosalie when he appeared. "You know better than to scare her," he said sadly.

Rosalie sighed and locked her fingers around Emmett's. "If you say so, mutt."

"Leech," he retorted.

I glanced back and forth between Jacob and Rosalie. "Are you a vampire, too?" I asked Jacob.

He threw back his head and laughed. "Me? A bloodsucker? Are you kidding me? I find it hard enough living with them!"

"He's a werewolf," said Bella. "Well, not exactly. More of a shapeshifter. His ancestors could've picked anything. They just happened to pick wolves. Jake and the pack can phase anytime, not just at full moon."

"Pack?"

"All the guys back in La Push," explained Edward. "You know at lunch a couple of weeks ago, when you were thinking about that girl whose dad lives in Forks?"

"How do you know that?" I asked, my mind trying to get everything through it and keep me up to speed.

"I read minds," he said. "If you can call it that. Anyways, you were absolutely right. I'm the youngest son. You never knew Bella's last name, did you? Paisley, meet Isabella Swan."

I leaned against a tree. "Your dad's chief of police in Forks?"

Bella nodded.

"And he's okay with you going up here and pretending your parents died or whatever and you got adopted by Carlisle and Esme?"

"He knows all about our little secret," she said. "We had to tell him when he noticed that Ness was growing at five times the speed of a regular child. He took it hard, but he's used to it now. We go to visit him sometimes, and he comes up here sometimes, too."

I felt like my head was spinning, like I'd been twirling around for too long and now the world wouldn't stop moving around me.

"Here she goes," remarked Alice.

"You owe me five bucks," Jasper told Emmett. "Alice is always right." Emmett grimaced and handed over a bill.

"What is it with you two and betting?" exclaimed Esme from across the clearing, and then all their voices started to blur together. I stumbled out of the clearing and the last thing I heard was Alice telling Nessie, "Don't follow her, she'll be fine. Just give her some time."

***

_**Author's Note: **__A Christmas present to my readers! I hope that this slightly-longer-than-normal chapter made up for the short chapter and the cliffhanger last time. For those of you reading "Summer," I tried to get Paisley to have a different kind of reaction to vampires and werewolves/shapeshifters than Summer did. Variety's always good. I hope everyone had/is having a a good Christmas, if you celebrate Christmas! If you don't, that's cool too. I made my friends (the one who sold her house online to Paisley's dad and the one who isn't involved in this story) a video for Christmas on iMovie. All these pictures and videos of us from the summer. My little sister's a co-star because my mom and spellbinder112's mom are BFFs so they hang out a lot, and I bring my sister and spellbinder112 brings our other friend. (If you don't care about the details of the video, feel free to skip to the end of this author's note.) Most of the pictures are taken at the beach, which is about two blocks from my house. The second place goes to the tent that we set up in spellbinder112's backyard and stayed in for three nights in a row, and I'd have to say that third place is the road that goes from our school to spellbinder112's house. Our summer routine went kind of like this. Spellbinder112 would go to my house or our other friend's house, and we would meet up at the shopping center that's pretty much exactly in the middle of my house and our other friend's house. (Our other friend is going to be referred to as ilovemyteddybear4 even though she doesn't have Fanfiction, because she does love her teddy bear.) Then we would all buy ice cream and candy and go to the beach and take pictures and then we would go buy energy drinks and then walk up the stairs, past the school to spellbinder112's house and take psycho pictures and then sleep over at my house or spellbinder112's house or ilovemyteddybear4's house. And then the next day it would start all over again. And sometimes spellbinder112's house would take us and the boat up to the lake for the day and we would go out on the boat and go tubing and then go out for dinner at the place at the side of the lake where everyone would be wearing their bathing suits and shorts and flip flops and the seats would always be wet and there would always be sand all over the floor. Okay, so I'm exaggerating. Maybe it was only our table that had everyone in bathing suits and sand and wet seats. But that's not the point. Anyways, moving on. Thanks to my reviewers, __**HPobsessssssed7**__, __**wishfulthinking123**__, and __**Cyllena**__. Also, thank you to anonymous reviewer __**AnaStasia**__, I hope you're having a good time in South America! Even though you won't really be able to read this until you get back. When's that, January? Anyways, this author's note is probably the longest I've ever written, so I think I'll stop now. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!_


	10. Nightmare

Chapter 10

I walked (somewhat numbly) back home. Up the porch steps, across the porch, into the house. I told Kit that my textbook had been picked up by the janitor who was then four doors down the hall, and that I had then realized that I didn't even need it and put it back in my locker. Then I shut myself into my room -- that seemed to be a favourite pastime of mine these days.

I opened my laptop and ordered a box set of Kate's favourite book series to be delivered to her house with a note that I typed into the message box before clicking "ORDER" and using my emergency credit card to pay. The note said: _Happy Christmas, Kate! Love from, Paisley. PS: If you open it before Christmas morning, the Energizer bunny will tell me and I will personally fly back to England and force you to listen to Justin Bieber while watching me use your lucky t-shirt to dust your bedroom windowsill. You should really dust that sometimes._

_kateluvsthesun: Heeeyyyy!_

_paisley23: I'm actually doing homework right now so I can't talk... I'll TTYL though, OK?_

_kateluvsthesun: OK... Byeee... 3_

Vampires. I would've liked to think that they were lying, but it didn't seem like it. Rosalie dropping down out of the tree... That was definitely _not _human. Edward knowing what I'd been thinking about at lunch... I wasn't sure exactly how that played into the vampire thing. Could vampires read minds? How was I supposed to know? Kate was the one who read all of the vampire books, and I wasn't exactly going to email her saying, "Hey, Kate, I wanted to know if vampires can read minds." She would want to know _why _I wanted to know, and I couldn't tell her that there was this guy who was reading my mind and that my new friends were vampires, could I? I only knew the basics; they drink blood, they sleep in coffins. Garlic, crosses, sunlight. Yet how much of that could be true? After all, Alice and Nessie hadn't exactly burned to a crisp in my backyard.

Maybe they just weren't vampires. Maybe the answer was that simple. They obviously weren't human, but there were plenty of mythicial, unhuman creatures out there, right? Too bad I didn't know a thing about any of them.

But it didn't seem likely that they were lying. Call it some uncanny power, but I could always tell when people were lying. I could lie moderately well, but even the smoothest liars, like Raynee, couldn't get past me. It was as if I had some kind of sensor. That's how I'd known that the Cullens weren't telling their whole story before.

I was surprised when Dad knocked on the door to tell me that it was time for dinner. I glanced outside; the sky was darkening fast.

I dreamed that night.

First I saw, in slow motion, Rosalie dropping out of the tree and nearly landing on top of me. _If you tell anyone, it could ruin everything for us..._ I saw Jacob's laughing face in my mind. _Me? A bloodsucker? Are you kidding me?_ Then Bella's voice drowned his out. _He's a werewolf... More of a shapeshifter..._ Then Rosalie was back, saying that they had nowhere to go after here, not for a long time. Alice's sparkling image appeared in my head. _Here she goes..._ A five-dollar bill, passed from Emmett's hand to Jasper's. _You owe me five bucks. Alice is always right._ Alice's voice again -- _Don't follow her, she'll be fine. Just give her some time._ Nessie's face looming in the darkness. _We're vampires._ Vampires. Vampires... The word seemed to echo. And finally, I stood in the clearing again, watching in horror as two-inch long fangs grew from each of the Cullens' gums and every last one of them leapt towards me.

***

When I walked into English the next day, I didn't go to sit by Nessie. In Socials, when I had no choice but to sit next to her, I didn't move my eyes from the textbook in front of me, only looking at her with my peripherals so that I had a good chance to run away if she suddenly grew fangs like the Nessie in my dream.

At lunch, I slid down my locker to sit on the cold floor there in the hallway. Solitude. But I was joined shortly by a group of six hysterical girls, some of whom I recognized from the endlessly-talking groups in the back of my classes.

"Hi," giggled the black-haired girl in a denim mini-skirt and knee-high black leather boots. "I'm Kyla."

"Stacey," said the one with the elbow-length white-blonde hair and the big blue eyes. Shiny pink lip gloss, a pink tank top, white ruffled skirt, shiny silver heels, tiny sequined purse. She reminded me of a Barbie.

The girl with the strawberry-blonde hair in a cut just a little longer than Alice Cullen's introduced herself as Alyson, which was eerie and a creepy coincidence, if you ask me. The one with the beautiful waves of chocolate-brown hair announced that she was Chelsea. The other two seemed to be twins, with coffee-coloured skin and pin-straight hair so dark brown that it was almost black; Hailey and Jenna.

The six girls were staring at me, waiting for me to tell them my own name. When I did, a spark of recognition flickered through six pairs of eyes. Two blue, one green, one grey, two brown.

"Oh, my God," said Stacey, smacking her pink bubblegum. "You're the one who's always hanging out with Renesmee Cullen, right?"

I nodded, and then they all started talking.

"Jacob and Edward and Emmett and Jasper and EJ are _hot,_" said Alyson dreamily.

"Yeah, but Jasper's weird," giggled Kyla. I wondered if she ever _wasn't_ giggling.

"Besides, they all have girlfriends," Hailey added.

"Yeah, their _sisters,_" laughed Jenna, tossing her dark hair over her shoulder.

"Well, they aren't _actually_ related," said Chelsea, who seemed to be the quietest and least annoying out of all of them. "They're all adopted. EJ and Renesmee are twins, and Edward's their brother; and Jasper's twin is Rosalie. None of it's incest or anything." I admired Chelsea for having her (incorrect) facts straight.

There was a silence, and then Alyson broke it by saying, "Well, EJ doesn't have a girlfriend."

Stacey rolled her bright blue eyeshadows and redid her lip gloss. "We aren't talking about that anymore, Aly."

Alyson looked crestfallen. "Well... Why not?"

Well, they might have been stupid, but they were definitely entertaining I ate my lunch there the next day, too, never speaking unless spoken to, which I wasn't.

On Saturday I woke up feeling immensly relieved inside; no school today. No chance of seeing Nessie and having to pretend that I wasn't scared out of my wits. Raynee was already at work when I came into the kitchen; it seemed that the whole thing from the cruise wasn't ever going to turn into a great divide and she was working a lot lately. She divided her wages into three; the first third went into her car fund, the next third in her wallet, and the remainder in a brown paper envelope that she gave to Dad at the end of each month. Judging by the snoring upstairs, Dad was still asleep. Chase and Jadin sat on the couch, watching cartoons while Kit stood at the stove with a cooking utensil in one hand. I sniffed eagerly -- chocolate-chip pancakes.

"Save me some batter so I can have some later," I ordered, pouring myself a glass of milk.

"Aye, aye, captain," joked Kit.

The phone rang. I glanced at the clock. 8:30 on a Saturday morning. I grabbed the cordless phone off of the counter, where it sat next to the fruit bowl.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Paisley."

"Nessie," I said, glancing at Kit and pretending to aimlessly wander out of the room.

"You've been avoiding me." It wasn't a question.

I heard a voice in the background. "Renesmee Carlie Cullen, hang up the phone this instant! I told you to leave her alone!"

Nessie's laughter rang through the phone line. "You should've come earlier, Alice. Do you mean you didn't _see?_"

"You know I can't see you, EJ _or_ Jacob. Now put the phone down!"

"Too late!" I heard a door slam. "Sorry about that," said Nessie breathlessly. "Alice is determined that I leave you alone until you're comfortable with... you know..."

"It's okay," I said politely.

"Nessie! Closing your door won't help you!" I heard Alice shouting, her voice slightly muffled. "I'll kick it down, I swear I will! I'm stronger than I look!"

"Alice," came a warning voice, "if you kick it down Carlisle will see to it that you don't get to a mall for a month."

"Thank you, Esme," called Nessie sweetly. "Anyways. You've been ignoring me."

"I know." What else was I supposed to say?

"Can you meet me and Jake at the school this afternoon?"

"Er..." I thought for a minute and then made a snap decision. "Sure."

***

By the time I left the house at ten minutes to one o'clock, I was thoroughly regretting agreeing to meet Nessie. My heart was bouncing around my chest. I'd actually contemplated phoning and canceling, but I oculdn't seem to do it.

Jacob and Nessie were sitting on the cold, yellow metal bench in front of the school. Nessie smiled uncertainly when I got to them. We went around the school and through the forest where I'd been told the Cullens' secret three days before. Shortly, we came out onto a road I'd never been on before. A shiny black convertible sat before us, roof up, tires clean from the rain.

"My birthday present," said Nessie. "Only I can't drive it yet."

Jacob took the wheel and Nessie sat with me in the back while we drove quickly down the street to the highway. We drove along for a while in silence, towards the ferry terminal, until we reached a big red-and-white barn. We turned onto the road beside the barn and began a twisting, turning journey through the fields. Eventually the fields turned into a thick forest. Jacob turned onto a winding gravel driveway with grass up the middle that I hadn't seen, and took several hairpin turns without slowing down. I squeezed my eyes shut until the car came to a stop.

When I opened my eyes, I was surpised to see a huge house with ten garage doors facing me. Nessie pulled me out of the car with her and Jacob parked in one of them before reappearing at Nessie's side. The house was a dark wood with lots of windows and three floors, plus an entire floor dedicated to the garages. Nessie led me up a wide set of stone steps and to the thick wooden door. There was a thin, tall window with frosted glass on each side of the drawer. I couldn't see inside until Nessie opened the door and ushered me inside. Jacob wrinkled his nose slightly as he followed us.

"What did I tell you, Nessie?" said Alice sadly, appearing suddenly at the top of the staircase. "I told you to leave her alone. You're taking advantage of the fact that I can't _see_ you or Jacob, aren't you?"

Bella appeared next to her and gave me a much warmer welcome. "Paisley! Hi," she said happily. "Nessie, would you give her a tour?"

I didn't know what I was expecting to see in the Cullens' house (coffins, maybe a couple of bloodless corpses in the coat closet?) but whatever it was, it wasn't there. The house seemed normal enough; a large living room with a wide-screen TV, an office with as many high-tech computers as the computer lab at school, several well-decorated bedrooms. The strangest thing was how spotless the whole place was.

"Oh, well," said Nessie vaguely when I asked her. "Jake and EJ and me are the only ones who actually sleep. Plus, Esme's at home all the time. So she cleans a lot, when she's not doing blueprints and ordering stuff from catalogues." She got me a glass of orange juice from the kitchen -- I hadn't been expecting them to have food, as they had never eaten at school, but Jacob seemed to eat a lot and I'd forgotten that Nessie and EJ ate a bit, too. We sat down in the living room, where Emmett and Jasper were cheering loudly in front of the TV.

"Five dollars, please," grinned Jasper a moment later. "The Cowboys are the best!"

"Texans," grumbled Emmett, pulling out another bill. But this time, Esme swooped in and snatched it out of his hand before he could pass it to Jasper.

"I keep telling you boys, no more betting!" she said sternly. "Every time you make a bet, _I_ get the money."

Emmett and Jasper groaned, but a passing EJ groaned. "You'll be rich!" he said, disappearing up the stairs.

Emmett and Jasper wandered away and Nessie glanced at me expectantly. "All right," she said, "so what do you want to know?"

I stared at her.

"Oh, come on," she said impatiently. "What questions do you have about us?"

I thought for a minute. "Tell me all about... all of you. Like how you got here and stuff."

Nessie sighed. "It's a long story." And then she took a deep breath and began. "Carlisle was born sometime in the 1600's..."

***

_**Author's Note:**__ First, I'm just gonna say that I am officially deciding not to bother you guys with the details that you already know about the Cullens. The next chapter will begin after Nessie finishes the story. And in case you're **spellbinder112**, Kyla & Stacey & Alyson & Chelsea & Hailey & Jenna are kind of like us, but stupid and annoying. And we don't have twins in our group. I wonder if they're going home and referring to Paisley as "lunch buddy..." Although we do know Lunch Buddy's name now. Haha, that can be her screen name! You know, since I'm Faerie0975 and you're spellbinder112 and then there's ilovemyteddybear4... :) Second, I'M SORRY! I know I haven't updated since Christmas. But you should be thankful... You probably wouldnt be getting an update if I hadn't stayed home yesterday and today and written for this story and Mudlbood practically the whole time. Just sayin'... ;) Also, this is a pretty long chapter by my stories' standards. And I know that I'll probably get hell for taking so long to update. But I have (sort of) a couple of excuses. The first is completely legit; I had exams. I mean, I know that they were only a week out of the month and a half or however long it's been since the last chapter, but it's a pretty good reason. The second reason is that over Christmas I've been kind of obsessed with Kelly Clarkson (well, it kinda sorta started in November when I saw her in concert, which was AWESOME!). It's getting a teensy bit out of hand -- I literally listen to nothing else. Her CDs have been banned from the dinner table and my parents and brother are completely sick of her music. My sister's okay with it 50% of the time, but only because she's nine-and-a-half years younger than me and is convinced that anything I do is completely 100% the right thing to do... Another sign of how bad my addiction is -- I was sitting in the car waiting for my dad to come back from the grocery store or somewhere and I was looking at the quarters that we keep in the car for parking meters, and I got really excited because one of the quarters was from 1982 (the year Kelly was born) and the one right next to it was from 2002 (the year she won American Idol). Also, I am seriously considering celebrating her birthday on April 24th (she's turning 28!). I may actually bake a birthday cake... That is, if I don't screw it up because I'm not really good at cooking. Anyways, back onto the topic of the story. I really admire you if you've stuck with this story and you're still reading, because, well, I haven't exactly been faithful with the updates. All of my stories are feeling very neglected... Thanks to the people who reviewed last chapter, __**AnaStasia**__ (I'm glad you had a good time in South America!), __**HPobsessssssed7**__ (I'm looking forward to your third reaction to my KC obsession, LOL), and __**wishfulthinking123**__ (good job spotting that EJ wasn't there... I'm now pretending that he was there and I just didn't write about him... :P In truth, I completely forgot about EJ... What kind of an author am I?!). Anyways, this is probably one of the longest author's notes I've ever written (although I copied and pasted most of it from "Summer" and "Mudbood") and so I'm gonna shut up now. :)_


	11. Black

Chapter 11

As Nessie finished her (extremely long) story, Carlisle walked into the room. I couldn't help but stare at him. He definitely didn't _look _over four hundred years old. But since vampires didn't age, according to Nessie, that wasn't saying much. Whenever anyone came into the room, I could only think of their story. I had a feeling that Nessie hadn't told me absolutely everything, just the basics. For instance, I could tell she'd skipped a lot with Rosalie's story, and even more for Jasper; surely there was more to his story than he'd been in the war and was changed by someone named Maria, then found Alice and then the Cullens? But i didn't ask. I trusted that Nessie wouldn't keep anything from me without a reason.

Bella drove me home in a shiny red Ferrari ("a gift from Edward," she said, wrinkling her nose in distaste). Kit's eyes were wide when I came in, and I immediately knew that she had seen me climbing out of the fancy car.

"Who was that?" she asked, peering out the window as the Ferrari disappeared around the corner.

"Bella," I said, as if it were no big deal. Then I shut myself in my room as usual.

_kateluvsthesun: Can u talk now?  
paisley23: Ya. Sorry about b4.  
kateluvsthesun: It's ok.  
paisley23: How's it going w/Liliana?  
kateluvsthesun: She's actually not so bad. Went 2 c a movie w/her last week.  
paisley23: Really?  
kateluvsthesun: Don't worry, I'm not replacing u or anything. :P_

I didn't know what to say to that_. Yes, but I'm replacing you? _I couldn't tell her that.

***

Monday rolled around and when i woke up, I mindlessly started getting ready for school before realizing that it was the summer holidays. I wandered aimlessly around the house, bored, trying to think of something to do. Finally I looked up the number I wanted in the phonebook.

_Cullen C & E ........... 627-4185_

"Hello?"

"Hi, Nessie," I said, for some reason immensely relieved that she was the one who answered the phone.

"Paisley?"

"Called it!" I heard Alice say excitedly.

"You know, you really should learn to look at the caller ID, Ness," came another voice in the background.

"Shut up, EJ," grumbled Nessie.

"Yeah, it's me," I said.

"Hi, what's up?" asked Nessie. There was an awkward pause.

"Nothing, really. I just wanted to know if maybe you could come over."

"Um, yeah. Sure. When?"

"Eleven o'clock sound okay?"

"Sure," she replied. "See you then."

I hung up and then realized that I should have asked Dad first. I headed upstairs to tell him that Nessie was coming over, but discovered that he'd left for work early in the morning. When Nessie arrived, we decided to walk down to the shopping center. At first, I was unsure, because we would need to cross the highway, but Nessie quickly convinced me that it was okay, as there was a crosswalk. And so we set off. Down the hill, across the highway, along the road past a tall, dense forest and the swimming pool and the bus stop. Along the way, we played a random game that basically consisted of taking turns asking each other random questions.

"What did you say when you found out that you were going to be a big sister?" asked Nessie.

I blushed, remembering the day that I'd found out my mother was pregnant. I hadn't had a reaction to Kit, as I'd only been a year old, but I'd been six when the twins were born. "I said, 'I'll believe you when I see the baby come out.'" Nessie laughed. "How come you asked that?"

Nessie grinned at me. "You were thinking about it, I guess. Daddy was laughing and I asked him why, and he said to ask you that."

_Daddy?_ I was puzzled for a moment until I remembered Nessie's story; Edward and Bella were biologically her parents. Now _that_ was a shocker. Never saw that one coming.

"So how come your dad can read minds?" I inquired.

Nessie answered quickly, like she'd been waiting for this question. "Some vampires have powers," she explained. "Daddy can read minds. Momma's a shield. Jazz can manipulate peoples' emotions. Alice can see the future."

"See the_ future?_"

"Well, objectively. Only if a decision's been made. Say you decided to go buy some milk. She'd see it. Say you then changed your mind and decided to go to the movies instead. Then she would see that." Nessie paused. "Except she usually sees more important things."

"Could she see us when we decided to go for a walk?"

"Like I said," replied Nessie, "she usually sees the more important stuff. But if something was going to happen, she wouldn't see it, because Alice can't see me or EJ or Jake or the rest of the pack. Like when Daddy left Momma and Momma went cliff-diving. Alice saw Momma jump, but then Momma's future went blank, 'cause Jake saved her. That's the only reason that Alice came back, was she thought that Momma's future went blank because she'd died. She wanted to make sure Grandpa could deal with it."

"You said your mom was a shield. What does that mean?"

Nessie shook her head. "You've asked three questions," she smiled. "You're only _supposed_ to ask one." Of course, after she'd asked me another question I asked that one again.

"There are lots of types of shields," answered Nessie. "Momma's blocks mentally. Daddy can't hear her thoughts and my power only works on her if she takes her shield down."

"You have a power?" I said, surprised.

"I'm not done yet," laughed Nessie. "Anyways, Alice can still see Momma's future because it's not a mental power. Jazz can still manipulate her emotions, too."

"Tell me about your power," I begged.

Nessie shook her head again, her bronze curls bouncing back and forth. "Nope, I get to ask you a question now." She couldn't avoid telling me, though, because I asked her right away after answering about why I hate cherry-flavoured candy. "Okay, okay," said Nessie, and stopped walking. We stood facing each other on the street corner and I couldn't help but wonder what the people passing us in their cars were thinking. Nessie looked like she was concentrating on something. She ordered me to close my eyes, and then her hand brushed my arm and I saw a brief picture of a girl with dark red hair, wearing a plaid skirt, black leggings, a pink tank top, a purple scarf and grey boots, sliding down in a greyish-blue plastic chair in a classroom that I recognized immediately. It was... me. On my first day of school in Canada. My eyes flew open.

"What was that?" I asked in a hushed voice that I could barely hear over the traffic around us.

Nessie smiled. "My power. I can show others what I'm thinking, but only on contact. Before you knew what we were, I had to be very careful not to touch you at all. I can't control it that well yet, I have to concentrate a lot to show people particular thoughts. If I'm not concentrating, they just get whatever I'm thinking at the moment."

We continued walking and reached the shopping center quickly. We bought hot chocolate and wandered around at random, just like Kate and I used to do before the move. Did that mean that Nessie was my replacement for Kate? I tried not to think about it.

"Hey, I'm going to go over to the gas station across the street," Nessie said suddenly. "Do you want to come? They have all these different kinds of candy for only five cents."

I shook my head. "I'm out of hot chocolate," I said, tossing the coffee-to-go cup in the nearest trash can. "I'm going to go back and get more. I'll meet you back here after?"

I walked quickly back to the place where we'd gotten the hot chocolate. As I waited in line, I glanced out the window. I had the perfect view of the gas station, with Nessie walking across the street towards it under the blinking yellow lights at the crosswalk. The perfect view of her glancing over into the shadow and doing a double-take, appearing to think carefully about something. The perfect view of her teeth digging into her lower lip as she looked around towards the coffee shop I stood in, then darted away, disappearing into the forest behind the gas station. The perfect view of the four black-robed figures that followed her.

***

_**Author's Note: **I really do love writing cliffhangers! Now, are you proud of me for not taking a month and a half to update? I don't have much news, aside from the fact that my ex-best friend got a minor concussion when a stop sign fell on her (don't laugh). Tristan was swinging around on a stop sign and there was this huge CRACK! and it fell and it hit Caitlin and then she started forgetting things! Little things, like song lyrics and who people were. Like celebrities and stuff. (Apparently one of them was Kelly Clarkson, that made my day! Except for the fact that that was one of the ones she couldn't remember ANYTHING about or something...) Oh, and my fish died. He lived for 2 years and a bit, plus however long he was in the pet store before I got him. My sister cried. :( Now, thanks to my reviewers from last chapter... **. **(I find your response entertaining -- "But I think EJ and Paisley need to hook up!") and **HPobsessssssed7** (whose favourite line of last chapter was "I admired Chelsea for having her (incorrect) facts straight" and whose sister got to see KC in concert! I've seen Kelly once in concert, last November, and I swear I'll see her again someday!). And I'm sorry this chapter's pretty short and definitely not my best writing. I admit it, I'm a failure. :( My KC obsession has been distracting me. Seriously, there's so much to DO on the KC forums! Oh, one more piece of news -- there's a KC fanfic board! Not on here, but someone made one. And I have a story! :) It's called "All I Ever Wanted" and it's a Kraham fic (for those who don't know, that's KC and Graham Colton. They dated in 2005 and broke up in 2006 because they were both too busy for a relationship, but Kelly said something once about being able to see herself with Graham again when they weren't as busy). If you wanna read it I'm putting the link on my profile page, somewhere near the top. :) And if you do read it, make an account and comment because only one person does that for me right now :(  
_


	12. Control

Chapter 12

I abandoned the hot chocolate line and started across the parking lot to the road. My eyes on the forest, I was about to cross the street when I heard someone say my name. I spun around to find EJ leaning against the wall of the haircutting salon, raising one eyebrow at me.

"You're not going after her," he said, as though that settled everything.

"Try and stop me," I replied, trying to sound more certain than I felt.

EJ stepped forward and his hand closed around my wrist. "You aren't going anywhere," he said firmly, staring into my eyes. I couldn't look away; I was mesmerized. His eyes were the exact same shade of brown as the hot chocolate I'd been about to buy...

I nodded. "I'm not going anywhere." I shook my head furiously. Nessie, the black-robed figures... "What am I saying? Nessie's in that forest, those people followed her --"

EJ's eyes locked onto mine. "Ness is perfectly safe," he assured me. "They won't hurt her. She's too valuable for that. With any luck, we can save her before they get to Italy."

"Italy?"

"They're the Volturi," he told me. I looked at him blankly. "Has she not told you about the Volturi?" He sighed. "Of course not. They're like our police, sort of. Ancient vampires that rule Volterra, the 'safest city in the world.'" He grimaced. "Their job is to make sure that vampires aren't exposed."

"What do they want with Nessie?"

"Well, she's one-of-a-kind, isn't she?" He shrugged. "At least, as far as they kow. When they came to Forks, my family was smart enough to hide me. I don't know how Aro didn't see me, but somehow the plan worked." He ignored my curious expression and continued. "Of course, if they get Ness to Volterra and Aro reads her mind, he'll know everything."

"Aro can read minds, too?" I asked, momentarily distracted from the question that I had been planning to ask -- _who's Aro?_

"Not like my dad can," EJ answered. "Aro needs contact, kind of like Ness does. But then, at the same time, Aro's ten times more powerful than Dad, because he doesn't just know what the person's thinking at the moment, but everything they've ever thought about."

I returned to my original question. "Who's Aro?"

"The leader of the Volturi. Technically, it's a three-person job -- him, Caius, and Marcus -- but he's the true leader. They do what he says. He's the most powerful." EJ walked with me back to my house. When we reached the hedge that hid us from view, he stopped. I glanced back at him. "Go on," he said. "Pack your things."

"Pack?"

"Do you want to save Ness or not? tell your dad that you're staying at our house. Two nights."

"But he'll wonder where Nessie is," I protested.

"In the car."

"What car?"

"Just go." He pulled a cell phone out of the pocket of his jeans, shooing me towards the house with his other hand. Bewildered, I went inside. Dad wasn't actually back from work yet. Kit grinned at me as I came into the kitchen.

"What's up?" she asked, putting two sandwiches in front of Chase and Jadin.

"I'm sleeping over at Nessie's for two nights," I said, not wasting any time. Straight to the point.

Kit looked surprised. "Shouldn't you ask Dad?"

"You tell him," I said, and hurried into my room. I threw some clothes into a bag without even looking to see which items I was grabbing. I took the stairs two at a time and snatched my toothbrush from the counter. I wasn't sure if I would have time to use it, but Dad would know something was going on if I didn't take it. He'd already be suspicious, I knew, because I hadn't asked if I could go, so I had to cover all of my bases.

A red BMW was sitting on the edge of the road. EJ was in the passenger seat and I climbed quickly into the back. "What did your dad say?" asked EJ.

"He wasn't there." I glanced into the driver's seat to see who was driving and was surprised to see Rosalie with a grim expression on her face. I would never have expected her to be the one to come to my house to pick me up. As we turned onto the highway, she spoke.

"This isn't a good idea, EJ. Not only is she getting _human_ smell all over my car, but she can't help. She'll only get in the way. We can't get Ness back and look out for her at the same time."

EJ glanced at his aunt. "You didn't have to come, you know," he said.

Rosalie looked at him, turning her face completely away from the road. My heart beat faster, but the car took the next turn easily. "Would I have been able to stay at home?" she asked. "Not only are you my nephew, but there's your power to think about, too," said Rosalie.

"Nah," said EJ. "That doesn't work on the phone. I have to see you for it to work."

"You have a power?" I asked, my curiosity sparked.

"Yep."

I waited. Nothing. "Well, what is it?"

"MInd control," he said curtly.

I thought for a minute. "Is that how you made me not go after Nessie?"

Rosalie glanced sharply at EJ, turning the BMW onto the road by that barn. "You used your power on her?"

EJ shrugged. "I had no choice. She was going to go into the forest after Ness and the Volturi," he explained. "What if one of them was Jane? Do you think anybody would forgive me for what would happen to her?"

I didn't ask who Jane was.

If possible, Rosalie was driving even faster than Jacob did. We pulled into the many-doored garage and hurried up into the Cullens' house. Every single on of the Cullens (aside from Nessie, of course) stood in the living rom, waiting for us.

"Where's Nessie?" asked an alarmed Bella.

EJ recounted the story and Alice groaned. "What I wouldn't give to be able to see the two of you!" she mumbled, squeezing her eyes shut. "I can't see Jane," she reported. "She must be one of them." At this, Bella made a noise in the back of her throat that sounded almost like a sob, which struck me as strange; according to Nessie, vampires couldn't cry.

"We're going to go and get her, right?" I said finally.

"_You_ aren't," said Alice.

"What do you mean, I'm not?"

"I mean, you aren't going. We can't afford to have you to look after, Paisley, because there's too many Volturi. Bella could expand her shield to protect you, but frankly, it exhausts her, and some of them have physical powers, not mental, so she couldn't completely protect you." Alice raised one thin, dark eyebrow at me, as if daring me to object.

"Right," said Edward. "And Alice isn't going, either."

Alice spun around to face her adopted brother. "_What?_"

"You said so yourself, way back before Nessie and EJ were born," he pointed out. "Being around the two of them gives you a headache. You can't see anything where they're involved, and you'd be no help at all."

"What do you mean, _no help at all?_" said Alice loudly and indignantly. "I can --" She cut off at the look Edward gave her.

Carlisle looked around. "We're going to try and get Renesmee back without a fight," he ordered, "but if it comes down to it, we'll need some fighters. Jasper, Emmett, and Jacob. Bella and Edward, of course, and myself... If we bring any others, it won't look good to the Volturi."

They set off moments later, leaving the rest of us there in the living room; Esme, Rosalie, Alice, EJ and me. After a moment, Esme spoke.

"We might feel better if we distract ourselves," she suggested.

So Rosalie went out to the garage to repair the engine of Jasper's motorcycle and Esme went into the dining room where the Cullens never ate. I glanced through the doorway to see blueprints laid out all over the table.

"Can I give you a makeover?" asked Alice abruptly.

I looked at her, startled. "What?"

"A makeovr!" She clapped her hands together excitedly and scurried out of the room, returning witha digital camera. "And I'm not taking 'no' for an answer. Now for the before picture. Say 'cheese!'" she said, snapping a picture. She grabbed my wrist and started to tug me towards the stairs. "EJ, don't come upstairs before I'm done. If you do, I'll... I'll have Edward think of some punishment for you."

"I can _make_ you let me come up," said EJ quietly.

"But why would you _want _to?"

"I guess you've got nothing to worry about, then, right?" EJ left it at that, sitting down on the couch and reaching for the TV remote. Alice groaned and led me upstairs, through a large bedroom and into the attached bathroom. She sat me down in a low, soft chair and got to work.

Finally, she let me stand up and look in the floor-length mirror in her bedroom. I'd ended up in high heels and a short black dress, my hair curled and left to hang loose around my face. My eyes were covered in smoky eyeshadow and my eyelashes had been curled and coated in three coats of mascara. My outfit was accessorized with a large, bright pink bangle and large hoop earrings of the exact same colour. I had to admit, I was pretty impressed with what Alice had done. She snapped another picture and dragged me downstairs.

"Well, what do you think?" she asked EJ.

He glanced up from the TV screen. "Nice." Then he turned back to the football game.

Alice stepped in front of the TV, her tiny frame only blocking half of the screen. "Care to elaborate on that?" she asked.

EJ sighed. "Nope."

Alice rolled her eyes and stomped out of the room, leaving me standing there feeling idiotic, wondering what I was supposed to do now. I settled for wandering out of the room and onto the back porch and sitting down on the steps, staring out across the Cullens' huge backyard. Eventually, I heard the sliding glass door open and somebody came out and sat next to me. I shivered; my jacket was still lying on the floor in Alice's room and it was December. I glanced sideways to see who was sitting with me.

EJ.

"Ness is going to be fine," he said after a while.

"How do you know?" I said. "Besides, if she gets to Italy before your family catches up with her, what's-his-name will find out about you, and then _you'll_ be in trouble, right?"

EJ shrugged. "I suppose." He said it like he didn't care.

***

_**Author's Note: **__Sorry it's been so long -- since the end of February. Exactly a month... :P But I have reason. (1) My KC obsession is still going strong. (2) My little sister was in the hospital. Her appendix burst, and apparently she's a little trooper because she didn't tell anyone. She has high pain tolerance or something. She just lay around and slept a lot and didn't eat much, and we thought the cold she'd had was lingering or something. Her friend's mom is a doctor and told us to take her in to see her pediatric doctor friend because she should've been better by now. They did a bunch of tests on my sister. Blood test... Nothing. Urine test... Nothing. Chest x-ray... Nothing. They kept her overnight and did an ultrasound in the morning and found out that her appendix had burst. And, just our luck, the only pediatric surgeon here was on his first vacation in three years. The surgeon-on-call was like, "If she was 10, I'd do the surgery, no problem, but she's 6, so..." So they sent her to the Childrens' Hospital on the mainland and she had her appendix removed. Then they found out her appendix burst between 4 and 7 days before we took her into the hospital, so she had a big infection. The doctor said it was the worst he'd ever seen from a burst appendix. After that her iron-levels were screwed up and she had to have a blood transfusion. All in all she was in the hospital for about a week and a half -- she came back on Thursday and she's really tired and has to have help going up the stairs and she's very grumpy all the time. She's having a nap right now. Anyways, now you're all caught up so I'll move onto thanking my reviewers from last chapter! __**HPobsessssssed7**__ (who recognized that quote from my past about "I'll believe you when I see the baby come out" and says it isn't fair for me to keep ending chapters with cliffhangers) and __**AnaStasia**__ (who really needs to make a freakin' account already! I like responding to reviews and I can't 'cause you're an anonymous one...). Also, I just have to quickly advertise my other stories that aren't on this site. There's the one I told you about last chapter, the Kelly Clarkson one (All I Ever Wanted) and the link is on my profile page. Also, I started a story on Fictionpress -- well, two -- and so you should go read them! The first is called "Juno" and it's branching off from a short story I did for my English 10 exam in January. The second is going to be a collection of songfics and it's called "Sing" -- I would've put it on here but none of them are going to be about characters from particular stories. So yeah. The first chapter is "Mary's Song (Oh My My My)" by Taylor Swift. I'm going to put a link on my profile page for it. :)  
_


	13. Return

Chapter 13

We didn't hear anything at all for three days; the only person who phoned was Dad, who yelled at me through the phone because I hadn't asked if I could stay at the Cullens'. He ended up letting me stay, though, but only after I promised to make dinner twice a week for a month as punishment. It wouldn't be so bad, I decided as I hung up the phone, mentally listing all the things I could make. Mac and cheese... Grilled ham and cheese sandwiches... I wondered if ordering pizza would work. Maybe if I paid for it with my own money? I would have to ask Dad when I went home.

It was near impossible to occupy myself for those three days. What was going on? Had they reached Italy yet? Had EJ's existence been revealed? Were these Volturi people on their way to get EJ right this second?

Alice and Esme set up a guest room for me. On the second night, I phoned Dad to see if I could stay an extra night. He wasn't too pleased, but when I offered to add an extra week to my punishment, he agreed. Dad was easy to bribe.

On the third morning, I heard the front door open, then Esme anxiously asking, "Did you get her?"

I ran to the top of the stairs in time to see a depressed-looking Edward slowly shaking his head.

"Are you insane?" asked Alice angrily. "Why would you come back without her?"

"Because the Volturi wouldn't let us in," explained Carlisle, hanging up his coat in the hall closet. "Nessie was already in there, which means that Aro knows everything. About EJ, and, of course, that we've told another human about our existence." His gaze flickered towards me as I stood there on the top step.

Alice closed her eyes briefly. "They're coming," she reported. "They're organizing it right now. Half the guard. We've got about a week."

"Only half?" interjected Bella. "When Irina went to them about Nessie, they sent _everyone._ The guard _and_ the wives."

Alice shrugged. "Well, they're only planning on half the guard," she said. "I don't know why. You know I don't see the reasons behind things."

"Just do what you did before," EJ suggested. "We've got that field we play baseball in, just like the one back in Forks. We can get everyone to come and help us again."

"They'll think we've lied to them," said a worried-sounding Esme. "Because we didn't tell them about you" -- she nods at EJ -- "last time."

"We can get as many as we can, anyways," decided Carlisle. I felt like I was watching some kind of movie or TV show. I wasn't involved in this conversation. "Jacob, will you contact the rest of the pack, the ones who haven't given up on shapeshifting?"

Jacob nodded. I could see the hollowness in his eyes. Nessie was gone. She'd told me all about imprinting. Jacob wouldn't be dealing well with this. "All of them except for Sam and Jared," he elaborated, dashing out of the room.

"Edward, Bella, head up to Alaska to get Tanya, Kate and Garrett," ordered Carlisle. "Alice and Jasper, you'll get anyone you can from the Americas... Rose, Emmett, you'll cover Africa. We don't know anyone in Australia... I'll get Europe and Asia. Esme, you and EJ will stay here. Paisley, you'll need to go home tonight, I think. But be careful, all right?"

I nodded, and as quickly as they had come, the Cullens left again, leaving Esme, EJ and I standing there. I could hear Jacob's voice coming from the kitchen. I asked Esme if my dad could pick me up and then phoned him. I packed my things and sat down on the front porch to wait.

"Where's Nessie?" he asked as we pulled back onto the road.

"She went to the grocery store." I'd fabricated this story while I waited for him. "With Carlisle and Bella and Alice."

Dad seemed to accept that. "You'll be making dinner tonight," he announced as we pulled into our driveway. "I can't take you to buy anything, though. I've got work to do, and Raynee's out, so you'll have to make do with what we've already got."

I sighed as i started up the front steps. _And day one of my punishment begins..._

_***_

_**Author's Note: **I know I've been, well, kind of a failure at updating my stories regularly. What can I say? Writer's block + being banned from the computer 'cause my dad is evil + my Kelly Clarkson obsession = no writing. But I'm back! And I'm gonna try harder. Really, I am. I don't know if it'll work, though. :P Anyways, thanks to the four people who reviewed last chapter: **I'm Alec's Number 1** (who foresees a couple in EJ & Paisley), **AnaStasia** (fifteen different languages?! Seriously?! Will you tell me what all of them are?), **StrawberryMusicFestivalChick **(sorry for all the cliffhangers and not updating), and **HPobsessssssed7** (who left a very long -- and very ADD -- review). Here is her review:_

I'm so sorry for the really LONG review-less stretch! If you want an explanation, PM me.  
Anyway... awesome chapter! The second I read the first sentence, I got a serious craving for hot chocolate, lol.  
And then I was like "Oh my gosh, EJ's finally speaking!" And then I got excited, because EJ is a secret, which makes me more epic than I thought. And then I decided that I really like how you're writing EJ. Because he's not an Edward. He isn't objecting to Paisley wanting to help. He's just presuming she will, which is something most of Stephenie's characters didn't do, but needed to do.  
And then I'm like, "Mind control!? Siriusly!?"  
And next we moved onto the point where Edward says that Alice can't go. And so I just glared at the screen. Alice is a perfectly capable non-human-being, thank you very much, Mr. Edward Cullen!  
I really Siriusly couldn't believe that they left (mostly) the girls home! Personally, I believe Rosalie could kick some butt. And we all know Alice could.  
Basically, I like EJ's attitude and I'm really looking forward of what's to come!  
Keep writing; update soon! Until next time; Cheers!  
~Bev.  
Ps. I just re-read my review and it's very... hyper? Can you tell I just ate cookies?

_Can you spell C-R-A-Z-Y?_

_Anyways, I'm cool. :) I'll try to update soon...ish. You know what you can do to help? Review! Reviews make me happy and also let me know that there are lots of people out there who want the next chapter, which makes me more motivated to write. So yeah. Press that little button... But I'm not gonna go all psychopathic and hold the next chapter hostage until I get a certain number of reviews._

_Oh, and for those of you who care, my sister's fine now! :D_

_So yeah. Review. :)  
_


	14. Author's Note

Author's Note

I usually refrain from posting whole-chapter author's notes... But I have to just this once. Please don't review this one because when I do update I will put it in this chapter and you'll have already used your review for the chapter...

The point of this author's note is to (A) apologize for how long it's been and (B) tell you some important news.

I'm sorry I've been so long in updating but I've got major writers' block and also I've been pretty busy. If you have any ideas for the story, please feel free to private-message me and it might help. :P

The important news is that this story is temporarily on hold. I know you probably hate me now but I don't want to start posting terrible chapters just to keep you guys interested or whatever. I'm hoping that you'll be okay with this. I will continue the story, but I don't know when. Hopefully, you guys will be okay with waiting because when I do post a new chapter, I want it to be a really awesome one.

Remember, don't review the author's note because then you can't review the chapter when I post it. If you have anything to say, or ideas for the story, just private-message me. :)


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